Are you afraid to die, you asked.

No, but not now, I said.  I have too much

that I must do.

 

Almost a joke, those lines, yet so true then.

My love’s lost memory cruelty,

my company his mercy.

 

To die is verb, appropriately, infinitive.

it’s infinite. Death is a noun, the name for a

specific, limited.

 

Dying, not infinitive verb, is what we do

from instant when egg bursts and sperm

shoots up in glory

 

Until the last exhale.  There is no proper

noun to call the part I dread: that time from cells first

knowing to the going.

 

Odd–as I fail, it’s you, mama, that I want.

How strange, that I can feel your love now. How sad I didn’t

pay enough attention to you:

 

I am so much ashamed I talked with the woman

in your room while you were dying.  No wonder

you flicked off my hand.