In the End

By Cliff Lake

In the End

 

What is set to distract me today?

What garish color presented?

What noises near or distant?

What almost sensical headline read?

What torrid editorial misguiding?

Such entertainments are exhausting.

Some days it is enough

To get food in me,

To hear a familiar tune,

Or visit with the neighbor’s dog.

The machinations that make this system churn

Tire me in ways overcome only by simplicity:

Small joys that feed deeply

And sometimes don’t come often enough.

The days wind down

And a long night approaches,

Then I will sleep long.

What is to become of me then?

What final indignity

Will be performed on my still form

Unheeding

Of the ministrations performed?

Will my natural fluids be drained?

Replaced with a better class of chemical

Destined to keep my carcass

From rotting so quickly

And thereby discomfiting

The still-living

Who will never be looking at it again?

Will my cadaver be then shoved into a box

And buried deep

Out of sight of the delicate-sensed

And reminded with only cold stone

That lasts ever so much longer

To herald that once a person

With my name existed,

And then didn’t.

Or is it to be reduced to ash

And set inside a jar

To be forgotten about,

Tossed away,

Or simply lost

In a hundred years’ time,

As it should be.

Does it surprise you

That I take some comfort in that?

I am here.

I was here.

Some day I will not be.

And that’s enough.

Have I amassed great riches?

No.

What does a jar of ashes in a closet

Need with money?

What does a discoloring corpse

Do with stock options?

Not a goddam thing.

In my life I have done things.

When it is over, I will not be doing things.

And neither will anyone else

At the end of theirs.

Seems simple enough.

It seems simple enough.

 

Cliff Lake 5/26/2023

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2023

Location: Dalton, MA, USA

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