What Awaits Poem by Michael Shepherd

What awaits us after certain death,
nor I nor you nor any here may know;

some may prefer to hold the unthinking state;
knowing only, what shall be, shall be;

and yet, it may not harm to have a dream,
a hope, a thought in purity;

why, it may even smoothe our latter days -
not by some mental last narcotic drip,

but curled around the treasure of our heart;
resting in our dearest, dearest love;

for some, it will be family:
perhaps to know our parents as new friends;

to talk to them of all unspoken things
we never thought to ask of them in life,

to throw aside the separateness of things;
to love our selves in them as they loved us;

- or if it be that all was fear and hate,
to learn a way to pass through that to love;

or, watch perhaps, in some angelic way
over our children as they live their lives;

watch them in some wisdom quite uncritical,
encompass all their life with eyes of love;

yes, those things would be good; and surely not
what our Creator would not want for us?

So, noble-hearted philanthropes might wish
above all else, to guard the institutions which

they built so generously from their rich and loving lives;
to watch benignly as those institutions grow;

I have a passing fancy that, the relay race as run,
some glorious gift to pass, might be to hand:

and to some soul unborn, now waiting there
ready to run - reach out and smiling say,

here, take this I hold out in my hand –
to you, a seeming torch, or jewel beyond price,

a flower, or keepsake of a life of love –
take this, my treasure throughout all my life,

this is what I loved, and worked at, polished bright;
this is the jewel of my life.. Do with it, what you will;

know that the joy is in the passing on;
what else is there to offer, heart to heart?

* * *

meanwhile, I’ll treasure that high moment when
all change became the strange; the eternal, natural.