Why Death Poem by Chima Ononogbu

Why should anyone die?
Why, therefore, death? Leaving this life and going
to the abode whereby souls grow deaf, more deaf
than a tree that runs not, even when a saw yells death from afar.

Then, a curious 9, my little yearning mind fumed with thoughts,
a fusillade of questions, which in circles span until vertigo seized
my head, and then imagination grew frail, untamed frail,
which became a morass I, a child, along dragged.

In my mind recesses billeted, as I treaded mountains and valleys,
swam in rivers gentle, even ones ramping and raging,
wondering in silence as in unquietness what a gut death had.
Then asking, what was in there for him to kill?

All answers that floated, to my mind compounded mathematics,
for brittle was its bones and fragile its blood, but to understand
I knew to trudge in motions of growth until it hardens
as tree trunk able to throw up into handless air boughs and leaves.

The moment came, then I realized life is a giving and is for a taking,
that time spins life to eternal exhaustion,
that pilgrims and sojourners one and the same
must set off at dawn and at dusk must return home.