Death Waiting Poem by Deluke Muwanigwa

Death Waiting

I have not met anyone as patient as death
It is always stalking though many a time we forget it is there
from birth to itself....death
It is there right next to you
sometimes getting so close you feel it
Sometimes it is so far
when fate is written in a star
I have met death on many occasions
I flew to Malawi in a plane full of enemies with whom we were at war
They could have turned on me but death told them to be civil and non was evil
I saw a gunfight during the war coming from the shops
the fiery wakes of bullets streaking through the air
seven people dying but death said No! It was not my day
Sometimes I meet death at the cliff face
In the valley of death I see corpses of thousands of millions of
skeletal remains of those who hobnobbed with death and it liked them
took them
but so far I have turned away from the precipice
death being unusually nice
There are times I have looked for death in my moment of need
He was nowhere to be found
which is why I am still around.
There are days I begged death to spare me
I got no answer
except that the next morning
the sun rose
the wind blew
death nowhere to be found
I have not met anyone as patient as death
Death waits
Not for me
but for all
even for mother earth
the end is coming
billions of years of strategic patience
death waiting.

C.18092023