The Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium monthly symposium is a collation of work by authors, poets, and artists on a particular topic. This month it is death. It covers a wide range of approaches to a subject usually considered not polite for general conversation.
Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium #11
I contributed four poems: one funny/creepy, one on aging, one on remembering the past, and one on losing your spouse. You can find them in the symposium.
But I reproduce them here. Because of recent events, this subject has been on my mind.
Time Piece Frail crepe skin on my hands, my face the moon, scape of pocks and warts. Hooded eyes time-faded peer out at aged flesh. A girl peers out, dismayed by the change. No way! Once auburn hair is white Her eyes, milky gray, scarce take in the sight. . Just yesterday we made our vows. I remember next the sleepless nights that quickly spun into toddler howls and school, shopping, sibling fights, endless carpool rides. Where did my forties go? And my fifties? Surely I would know When I turned sixty. But I don't. Years fly by and unseen, I become my mother. Maybe it was the years of care for aging relatives, who passed too often. Now friends disappear. As I shrink, I find I am the last to remember the history we lived. When young we never imagine that the elders will someday be us. Next time you call us Sweetie or Pops, remember the person looking back at you is your future. The monks were encouraged to meditate on a phrase we'd do well to remember. Memento mori, remember you must die. We don't know when or how our end, or if our families can come. In case you can't say goodbye Tell them often you love them And show them. Memento Mori Not nothing, not anything, not. Invisible enemy, edging close An unexpected accident. He sinks beneath the waves of death’s surprise embrace. Times we see it coming Knowing it will overtake No matter what we try. Times we don’t see it coming it still happens. Surprise! It happened September eleven flying home from a lengthy trip. Upon takeoff from Shannon His plane crashed. The airship barely sank, most survived-- all but seven. Generations passed without mention of him. I was the last to meet him before that fateful day, we forgot the past, his story, and all he did when with us. Time blurs our memories. Only faded photographs Remain for us still here. One day, I pull the photos out. The children crowd near. Soft voices say “Who was he?” I answer, “Your great grandpapa” He stares at us, unblinking, as if he guessed his audience, And dares us to keep thinking, and tell his story once again. It only takes one generation for history to be lost, forever.
Death’s Harbinger A gray tabby cat named Seth with a scythe-shaped spot on his chest lived at a nursing home. None knew whence he'd come. He ignored the living, but warmed up to those near death. The nurses noticed it first. They thought that Seth was cursed, for when Seth curled up on a patient’s bed the next day the patient was dead. Some people did not believe it. Maybe Seth was attracted to heat. Sick residents give off more heat, they said. Maybe Seth liked warmth, Not the dead. A doctor thought he'd prove it, and put a heating pad at an old man’s feet. Seth took his seat. What a shock they had-- in the morning the old man was dead. On that same night, the night nurse swore she had heard Seth growl at an ungodly hour. A gray man in a cowl stood at the door. Seth began to howl. The nurse ran away. The shadow man bowed, He tipped his scythe, Seth meowed, then the shadow man covered the old man in an invisible shroud. “It’s a nursing home! People die all the time!” Cried the doc. “I’ll prove you wrong. It won’t take long. I’ll let Seth sleep with me. In the morning you’ll see. I’ll be fine,” he said, then pushed Seth off the dead man’s bed. The next day the doc did not appear. With mounting fear they went to his place. They found the doc dead with a scratch on his face along with a look of dread. A cat that chooses who dies? This I’ll say about Seth: all the patients selected smiled when they died. But the doctor never expected. The shadow man to arrive. But he did. Mortality I’ve prepared for this My whole life. Why then dismay and fear, on the diagnosis. Not mine. Never mine. I would gladly shed this mortal flesh, a fading ghost among the living. I would not have to witness his passing, a consolation. Not mine the pain of loss no, mine the surrender. Will we race to the finish line? Will we play out the tender scene of spouses holding hands from separate beds? At least heaven’s wait for him will not be long, or he for me. Death shall lead us, hand in hand into eternity.
Too depressing, true, but I prefer to think of death as a new adventure.
Excellent! And so it is. I will post poems about that side of death next.