Old skin, once held tight
Against her skeleton
Rose no more, just draped
Loosely over unpadded flesh;
Un-tightened muscles, and tissue,
Lost its courage, no-fortitude,
Gone are the days and years
That stood against the
Indomitable elements;
The skeleton, now a landmark
Hidden under flesh and blood
Guts and moral fiber, backbone…
Collapsed from drudgery
Time, time: cascading inside.
Bones now leaving impressions
Accepting fate
Like tarnished silver!…
Hands look like autumn leaves
Fallen from a tree
Winter’s around the corner
The door of time is closing
Like an old wood pile
Being burnet up
Hard to open things
Hard to do anything
Precariously balanced
Painfully slow…
She hears my feet
Cross the roomher pale
Sweet blue eyes, flicker
Like butterflies…
Tilting her face
To catch her breath
She says:
“Who wants to live like this?”
#793 [8/11/05]
Notes by the author: “I think of myself as an old wood pile you might say, and so I use that analogy here: in my poem “An Old Wood Pile,” not out of disrespect. My mother had her mission, I was part of it. She was part of mine. I think I have learned to do one thing, if anything, in life, which is to examine it; otherwise, for me it would not be worth living. For this is where the truth of the matter is. Why do we do what we do; my mother said, “Who wants to live like this…?” and I had to make a choice for her, after she made her choice. We live in a world where most people, willing or unwilling live in a pretense, when my mother said want she said, there was no more deception for her, if there ever was any. She wanted to go to the next level, and said goodbye in her own way. As we will in time.”
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