Quiet Deaths Poem by Raj Arumugam

a photo album
is one’s pictorial grip on one’s life -
a slippery hold maybe,
but comforting nonetheless,
as one holds it close to one’s chest:
my friend declares, and pulls out
a personal volume of pictures


my friend
leans forward
to the carefully-kept open album,
index finger on a picture
of a man standing in the open fields;
and my friend whispers:
he was my neighbor;
he was a good man, kind
and always cheerful;
devoted to his family and friends and work;
much liked by all; he’s dead…
he died just last year…


and I look up at my friend
and I am offered a nervous smile;
and the unspoken words
slip into the spaces
between the pages of the album:
someday we too shall be gone
and perhaps someone
will point with a finger or cursor
and utter affectionate words in memory
of these quiet deaths
that remove each from one’s landscape…