"Mortality"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
3/27/07 7:28am pdt
We only
experience the pain of loss
The dead cannot console us with their presence
We don't claim to understand
No amount of care or grief can eradicate the
final fact of life.
We pray,
We shed tears of sadness
We embrace the memories of fullness
which existed along with the lives of
our deceased
Impermanence
is permanent
Surprise and shock reign supreme
Sadness, eloquence,
Memory, sustenance
Simple plans gone awry too often
As the physical
body ages,
and as the sands of time
fall through the glass
ever faster
and more erratic
loss becomes normalcy
eventually
The longer
one's life exists,
the more apt other lives are
to cease this existence,
until loss,
although never mundane or routine
seems somewhat normal
as others who lived
now do not.
When the
rapid amount of loss
weighs heavy on the soul,
grief turns to questioning again
Even after decades of knowledge
display to the living that mortality
severs the cords of
both the most righteous
and the most callous
Nothing prepares this life
for the loss of another.
And surely
nothing prepares this life
for the succeeding loss of yet
another,
and yet another.
But time
is not cognizant of mortality's blade,
and memory will soon become all that is
left of another life, now deceased
until memory dies
and mortality appears on the doorstep
with hat in hand
The reaper
is not a grim figure
but a sullen sad and lonely cipher
suddenly showing up to declare
our mortality survives
even as our lives are eradicated
Poetry
2007
