#73: Like, Wow, Death . . . Heavy! (Mortality)

There Is No Real Poetry Anymore,
So It Can't Hurt To Throw This In!

So now I'm almost 60!
I'm over at least one big shock . . . that parents don't live forever.

Sometimes the child comes welling up,
really pissed and nearly crying
about the fact that such lives - so important to the universe
are not eternal.

It might, I think, be justification for my own longevity . . .
thus to gain the time to tell my father's story.

Then I get this weird, egotistic flash . . .
My God, might someone feel that way about me?
Hell no! Not me! I sure don't think so.

But might someone feel that pain of powerlessness,
shoulder breaking against the titanium glacier of mortality
where I might be the cause?

My ex-wife? My loving girlfriend? My son?
It's not my fault, but maybe so.

Funny that I can't imagine that.
I guess there's ultimately a personal resignation.

My father must be as resigned to his mortality
just as I am to mine.

And then, that makes me wonder . . .
was Thomas' argument rage against mortality,
or simply the resignation?

As usual, my mind goes tumbling into a ditch
of its own, perpetual digging,
and I think to myself . . .
he was a brilliant man, wasn't he?
For all of the charm we've assigned him,
and our impressions of artistic, human spirit . . .
him, railing against resignation . . .
he had to have understood that it's inevitably
is the sane perspective.

And so, now I'm forced to picture him standing
at the foot of his father's bed, screaming,
"Fight, fight against the approaching sanity!"