Death After Life By Choice... Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

Walking out the front door
of a house she called ''Space''
she found a comfortable bench,
in a bog by a pond
with tall chained swings
and sweeping slides,
filled with children laughing;
and, there she sat down
to rest, muse, ensconce
in what memories she had
of her life that she once knew,
images, reflections that elicit-
tears of sad happiness.

And with both legs stretched out,
her arms criss-cross folded,
her eyes lifted skyward,
seeking out the gray billows
of clouds she could image
as ethereal silhouettes
of the many who had left her
years and years ago;
as a child, as a wife,
as a woman and best friend,
yet, the images were faded
like book shelves paved with dust,
from an old book warehouse,
where no one goes anymore,
as its worth is insignificant
and because so, as she sat alone
she considered herself the same.


She had learned to live her later years
by her own convoluted instincts,
from shades of apprehension
to a veil of reclusiveness,
so as to shelter her final day's
from the wounds, nails and glass
that we all must walk across
upon living out mortality,
as we know it, and cannot change it.
And she took all this inside
and about her tarried mind,
measuring out her worth
from her past and blurred future;
yet, with the same skewed yard-stick
she'd been measuring with for years.

In the morning they found her slumped
on the tall set of swings,
hanging by its chain
from the shortest of the swings.
Depression, all too often,
the most silent sudden death,
because the sufferers rarely speak
about the reasons why they feel
insignificant and desperate
to end the pain her way.
She had lived her life as she pleased,
and left it behind the same.
Death after Life, inevitable,
But des it lead to Life after Death
when Death is taken from God's hands into ours?





FjR-MMXV