In the End
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
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