|
Playing Posthumous 
How much sneer a gray head provokes.
Take
this woman friend
Of mine, past seventy, fit,
sane; but lucidity cut no
ice.
Her son wanted the estate,
signed papers, overnight
Mothballed her in a "home," stripped
of
rights and bank account.
At least she wasn't forced to attend,
as I was
mine, a requiem
And chime in with elegiac noises.
Resisting
the root-vegetable
Treatment got nowhere.
A revenant's seldom welcome
Least of all when still alive, yes,
and vocal? "We
can stand you
Dead, but only then." Oh. The role
demanded
cunning and acting
Skills not easy to master
for a says-what-he-thinks,
A does-what-he-says frontiersman.
(Best unlearn
that, old knife!)
So I read up on the animals'
shrewd ingenuity
At aping quietus�
how a frog or mammal
Will go belly-up,
let jaw hang and tactical tongue
Loll, considering teeth and claws
tend to avoid
carrion.
I practiced, kept practicing,
till each paw acquired
the proper
Leaf-curl. Memorized and repeated
Buddhist
mantras saying
We should live life as though
we'd already departed
it�
A plan under which the clattering
rat-wheel of
existence
Eased, slowed. Here's to going
about your
business as a grateful stiff!
(Figuratively speaking.)
And if the figure ill fit a
body
Still hale and flexible,
it nevertheless rhymed
With the hoary dictum
that we "become our survivors."
Thing is, above ground, we want
dinner, shelter.
Legatees
Mourned abundantly, rest assured;
but have
omitted seeing
To the loved one's material
needs. A blush, for
someone
Who never whines, to report;
I'd button it, absent
concern
For a flock these words may help
defuse
future-shock: the moment
They in turn are hustled off the scene
by their
premature bereaved
And, still breathing, are put under
a two-ton
blanket of piety,
For all food, the bread of tears,
for all roof, a
ceiling
Of satin homage. Never too soon
to prepare a
demeanor
To meet the mourners, a face
made up for the stage,
Plastered with this rigid grin�
a mimicry of the
old tombstone
Skull, its wings useless till those
waiting in them
provide the lift.
|
