The Passing
Place me not in a bed at my dying;
_I’d rather a bench by the sea
Or a patch of green grass in a meadow
_Where blossoms rejuven the lea.
Let me draw my last breath to the whisper
_Of breezes aswirl and adrift;
Maybe sigh and then die in the woodlands
_With birdsong bestowing a gift.
Whether passing in sunshine or drizzle,
_I’d offer one final appeal:
To arrive from that flight and then marvel
_At what the Beyond will reveal.
Margaret Brinton has lived in San Diego’s inland valley area for over forty years where she taught and tutored. Her poems have recently been published in California Quarterly and Westward Quarterly and The Lyric with upcoming work in the greeting card industry. She has previously been published in the Penwood Review and many other publications.
Very touching. It reminded me of Pope’s Ode to Solitude somehow, perhaps the love of nature’s company against all solitude.
Beautiful Margaret,
too many of us are shuffled or frog-marched off into a holding facility,
fronted by a Potempkin Facade of a luxury hotel
but which is at best a kind of beige prison with warders
some of whom treat you as pets.
and others as comical burdens,
at worst a kind of lietrally stinking, shrieking gulag
where you are malnourished, drugged and isolated.
Any decent Care Assistant of Manager
(and I have known many)
who dares to engage with
one of that alien category of creaturte a “Resident”
as if he or she were a human being is flagged as deeply suspect by the Central Planners
and generally sent packing.
You remind us of what human beings are and of what decent aging looks like,
warmest regards,
Karen
(former Care Assistant )
Margaret, how wonderful to contemplate your beautiful thoughts of passing.