THE QUESTION OF DEATH
Love & Death: Greatest Hits, with Joan Logghe & Miriam Sagan
Renée Gregorio

At 55, what do I long for?—not exactly
the checkout man at Albertson's 
who gives me my first senior discount
& I try to dispute it, ask:
"How old does one have to be?"
He answers: "55."
He didn't even ask for identification,
simply knew I'd crossed that threshold.

But this crossing-over, where does it lead?
Do I write a poem about death,
or do I sit down at last
and write my will?
If I practice
a certain fullness of the mind,
where does that take my body?
If I offer myself
and no one comes,
how would I stand for refusal?
In death, is there at last
a quieting of the questions?

Today, I've been married 14 years.
I used to think this a kind of dying,
feared sameness and dailiness, the dependable.
Now I use a wooden stick
to help me down the mountain,
reach for another's hand when crossing
a rough stream, no longer get feisty
when he calls me his wife.
Day after day, another sunset.

I don't know how to write about my own death,
hear the Hindu man in the train compartment
saying "It is written," although he was talking about
our meeting and parting and meeting again.
Yeah, it is written, this coming and going, this returning.

Maybe I'll come back as a desert apache plume,
a clump of seagrass in the dunes of Provincetown,
the fog that envelopes and releases the hills of Big Sur,
a river that slowly cuts its way through rock,
or a human who has certainty rather than questions.

I'm too busy being born to die,
and anyway death will come.
It will be quiet and rigorous
and ask something of me I had not
thought to ask myself.


©2011 Renée Gregorio