Elders have stopped reading the news

 

Igor Oleynikov       A Strange Night

I read this poem last night; it was posted on another blog. It hit me hard.

Elegy for the Mourning of my Death

by Risa Denenberg

Elders have stopped reading the news. We dream
            of serious play down on our knees—
cat’s eyes, jacks, the kiss that’s for keeps.
           
We know spring will come again and again, but not for us. 
            We fill pauses with baskets of laundry
and potsful of soup. We can’t reassemble the bones

of our dead or carry chrysanthemums to the cremated.
            We read the old cryptic texts on how
to greet aging. Should we speak or wire our mouths shut?

We prepare for endings, try to be thankful. 
           We nap in the afternoon.
We’ve already witnessed the future, while time lags behind. 

The whole lot must be coursework
            for something else—
the way the body is water, yet manages not to seem so.

The way an egg could feed a child
           or beget a chicken.
It barely matters now. Still, on that morning,

I hope to wake in my own bed, softly
            wrapped in the praxis
of long having known this day would come.

Then, let my fresh carbon mingle with the coal of my ancestors.