Musing About Death After Life...(Rep.) 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 set
of 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 still worth living,
the images and reflections in time-
that elicit tears of 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'd learned to live her later years
by her own convoluted instincts,
from shades of apprehension
to a veil of reclusiveness,
to shelter her egg-shell fears,
from the wounds, nails and glass
that we all must walk across,
living out mortality-
as we know it,
and cannot ever change it.

And she took all this inside her Mind
and countered it by measuring her worth
from her past and unforeseen 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 of voluntary death,
because the sufferers rarely speak
about the reasons why they feel
insignificant and ready to die,
and thus in many cases do;
despite symptoms that never lie;
Yet the truth is that we want
to believe that the one(s) we live for
are incapable of such thoughts,
and require professional help,
which if you think about that notion
it should register Waterford clear
that this notion is a sickness in itself!





FjR-MMXV