Everything We Can’t Find in Life Is There in Death

Death doesn’t scare me now as much as it did when I was young

By Lucigerma on iStock (image licensed by author)

Wasted an hour thinking about death.
Picked up my shirts at the laundry,
stopped at the drug store, grabbed
some wine, then sat and thought
about dying.

Death doesn’t scare me as much
as it did when I was young. The fear
of the undone, now replaced by
the smile of “what the hell was I
thinking so many years ago,”
and the surprise of living long
enough to regret nothing.

This ebbing fear of death
might be God’s way of preparing
me for the end, that universal
shot of anesthesia to numb an old
man flying through his last years.
Faster and faster the old ones soar,
feeling nothing but the scratches
of time as it brushes your skin.

My wasted hour, and third glass,
get me to the reality everything we
chase in life, but always an inch
beyond our grasp, is…