Heartbreaking poem illustrates the pain of accepting death
Let’s face it – there a few things harder to come to terms with than death. Whether it’s a loved one or perhaps your very own, death can be extremely difficult to talk about it, but perhaps we should try to more often.
I almost understand
I almost understand this resonance, this hum
or echo which I can only picture as a frequency,
oscillations expanding and diminishing
from a single source. And the sometime static
which crackles and interrupts, which implies
another source, another thought or possibility.
It comes when dragonflies shimmer in an afternoon’s
blue heat or when you’re watching drifting birds
and say to yourself, silently, aloud, their wings
absorb the sunlight, make deals with the wind.
It’s like that curious deep-breath sensation when,
diving on a weed-enfolded reef, you surrender
to the slew and sweep of swell and your body,
that bounded, unreliable, actual fact,
loosens the skin’s tight grip so you are
and, simultaneously, you are not.
It’s not persistent but too here and now
to be dismissed as fleeting. We are called back to
our other selves, to the commonplace again.
My grandchild stirs in the back seat of the car,
rubs his eyes then settles down to sleep again,
his chest rising and falling as the air
slips in and out, in and out, through that
open mouth and snaggle teeth. This day
is wet and hot and beads of sweat
have collected on his forehead. His tangled hair
is as orange as a mimic sun and his fingers
rest upon his knees like dreaming lizards.
And here’s Mark Strand, my while-I’m-waiting book:
so many poems about expecting to die,
and night and dark and, yes, a little light.
When my grandson wakes we’ll race into the pool,
he’ll splash and squeal and burble and fling himself
off the edge, kick his legs and almost swim.
What’s your favourite poem? Let us know in the comments below.
Written by Brook Emery.
This is an extract from Falling And Flying: Poems On Ageing, Edited by Judith Beveridge and Dr Susan Ogle, Brandl & Schlesinger.
All proceeds from book sales will go directly to the Penney Ageing Research Unit at the Royal North Shore Hospital. For Book sales, please email sogle@med.usyd.edu.au. For Donations, please click here.
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