Death

From time to time I think about that day
When my heart stops thudding in my chest
And I offer up my last sigh in a death rattle.
I cannot truly imagine what it will be like
Because I am a spectator-I can watch
As life leaves my eyes and the soul is
Separated from my body-that is not death.

I do not know what it is, but when I think
About it at any length, my skin grows clammy.
Millions of gray dots cloud my vision
I cannot breathe I lie down my head and despite
Wanting to run away, I cannot move.

Thoughts of it come while I'm eating ice
Cream and the cold sticky sweetness that melted
So deliciously in the life-heat of my mouth,
Instead offers to my palate the grim taste of the
Grave. It has a piquant note of annihilation.

I trespass among the stately carved monuments
of Oakland Cemetery biweekly on my way to classes.
Men on white and yellow lawnmowers
Pull black handles and flit from headstone to
Headstone. The calm silence of the thousands
Passed, anonymous to me in the past,
Is a comfort and a plague.