Death is No Stranger

Death

With its book of doom

Calls more frequently 

With the passing days

And waning years

Calling out

The many names 

Of forgotten faces 

Added to the growing tally

Of life's perennial loves

 and losses

Death has become

No stranger to me

No longer strange to me

And, one day,

 before too long, 

Death shall also be calling

Upon me as well

And 

With the familiarity with death's personality

There is no longer

Any feeling of contempt

But only of most profound respect

There is only a deep, deep sense of loss

Gone is the morbid curiosity

And the dark mystery

That is part of the naive innocence

Of an unbounded, untainted, unwrinkled youth

Unacquainted as yet

With death

There is a loss also

Of ignorant fear and naive courage

The foolish wiles of an unwrinkled forehead

In death I find 

Increasingly

A sense of profound peace 

And stillness absolute

And solitude most serene

With life's final resignation

Feelings that grow within me

With the passing years

That I have never found

In the living world

And I think to myself

Death comes to me

Not all at once

But by small doses

Measured by the hands

Of my clock

Seasons

Odd Ends: Perennial Poesy along the Way

2006