As family and friends gathered
Around the deathbed
Someone silently hollered,
At my moribund being, to embed
The 10-minute final warning
Only I could hear the calling
For my final thoughts to start pouring
Others in tears, grasping at straws
Desperately, ardently pleading
Another fate would be the draw
Ten minutes more for sharing
With a loved one about to forever go
Amid all the tears, the grieving, the love
Warm clasps, loving kisses never before
Felt or sensed as though from up above
What feelings could I honestly pour
Onto a life all condensed in one final moment
With muddled memories of a life in torment?
My cat of years looked up at me jaded
Yawning, sticking out its tongue
Away from the angst, sauntered nimbly
A grim reminder, little would change
Snub futile dreams of immortality
Death the leveler is finally in range
As images of the past furiously flashed by
I smiled at the fulfillment I had sown
By the outpouring of love of those nearby
Forgiveness and grief leaving me forlorn
Happy that the ordeal would soon end
Sad at unknowing what lay around the bend
Darkness would soon descend
On my being that I couldn’t defend
Departing from loved ones onto the unknown
Yet all of those millions now gone
Had suffered a fate just as my own
All mostly forgotten, now ash or bone
Yet we may fear death as reprimand
Dread her as highest agony to understand
Truth is we die longer than being around
And when we pass, it is the climax
Of solutions, and problems for death to ax
No more bills or adrenalin, no more tax
Ready to leave now
Let me go now
Pain be gone
Life be gone
Into nothingness
Into painlessness
Peace will always remain
In Death’s eternal domain
As the soul’s sole terrain
No more sighs, no more breaths
After the certainty of death
Endless silence, as demise creeps in with stealth
©Alwi Shatry, June 28, 2017