Something I've posted before but need to again

This poem about 'Finitude'  has been here before. But I'm feeling close to all that a lot these days. I wrote a letter to Bern to be opened upon my death because I wanted to be in charge of my memorial service and to let her know all the details she'd have to deal with.

When I wrote this poem, I was much younger. There was irony and humor in it. But in the last few years (how the hell am I 66?) it races closer to the bone. So, here again is one of my favorite poems I've ever written.

The Trouble with Finitude

I try, from time to time,

usually late at night after one too many glasses of wine,

to consider my mortality.

(I have been led to believe

that such consideration is valuable

in a spiritual way.

God knows where I got that....

Well, of course, God knows,

I'm just not sure.)

But try as I might, I'm not adroit at such thoughts.

It seems to me that I have always been alive.

I don't remember not being alive.

Granted, I have no personal recollections

of when most of North America was covered by ice

or of the Bronze Age

or the French Revolution

or of the Black Sox scandal.

But I do know about all that through things I've read

and musicals I've seen

and the History Channel.

I know, intellectually, that I've not always been alive,

but I don't know it, as they say,

“in my gut”.

(What a strange phrase that is,

since I am sure my 'gut'

is a totally dark part of my body,

awash with digestive fluids

and whatever remains of the chicken and peas

I had for dinner and strange compounds

moving inexorably—I hope!--through my large

and small intestines.)

My problem is this:

I have no emotional connection to finitude.

All I know and feel is tangled up with being alive.

Dwelling on the certainty of my own death

is beyond my ken, outside my imagination,

much like trying to imagine

the vast expanse of Interstellar Space

while living in Connecticut.

So, whenever someone suggests that

I consider my mortality,

I screw up my face and breathe deeply

pretending I am imagining the world

without me alive in it.

What I'm actually doing is remembering

things I seldom remember--

my father's smell, an old lover's face,

the feel of sand beneath my feet,

the taste of watermelon,

the sound of thunder rolling toward me

from miles away.

Perhaps when I come to die

(Perish the thought!)

there will be a moment, an instant,

some flash of knowledge

or a stunning realization.

“Ah,” I will say to myself,

just before Oblivion sets in,

“this is finitude....”

jgb