Dilemma – The Poetry Of It All

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The Future Of The Past

I have always, since my earliest remembered childhood, tried to imagine my death. The whole thought of it has quite simply fascinated me, and as I sit here, pondering my cancer diagnosis, I find that fascination still grips me.

I don’t, and have never looked at death as an ending. It is an event we all experience – every life that has ever existed on this planet eventually dies. It’s simply one of the most natural things all of us do.

That it is shared universally among all of us, whether we are animal or plant or whatever makes it fascinating. Name for me, if you can, another event that ALL LIFE experiences.

That we don’t understand it only serves to make it that much more exciting. As our lives progress the ‘new’ seems to gradually fade away until much of life is boring. When was the last truly NEW thing you experienced? The nature of death ensures its newness, at least for most of us.

Today, please enjoy this brief drink from the lifeblood of my past. The thing wasn’t originally written about death, per se, and in the end the question it asks is more about the choices we face in life than anything else…

Dilemma

A thousand tiny gnats are
biting me at once. Pressures
build up on all sides.
There are no good decisions
sometimes. I walk eternally
between the living and death.
A million monstrous rats are
begging me to follow. Why
do I feel so afraid?

I am Jon, and I wrote that years ago.