I figured I would share my very favorite death poem since I converse with it often . I wrote it for my brother as a birthday gift and like, I have written untold numbers of poems about death, but I called my brother to like apologize for not calling and he was like, "Yours was the call I most enjoyed missing. I always think on my birthday, "I don't remember asking to be born." It was too good not to use, so, I sent him this. He loved it. I love it too, but mainly because I ALSO managed to like, achieve my long held dream of using the word "photosynthesis" in a poem and making it WORK.
Happy Birthday
The way I see it, I do not recall requesting to be born,
all unaware, I rose to the top of the victimhood heap
shadow steps walked me, inexorable, coaxing me to sleep
to spring, reborn; far below now, faint and shifting in my eyes-- the earth.
No, I don’t remember demanding for my birth,
to be delivered to my unchosen mother my
similarly unclean and sinning sisters and brothers
to my absent and indifferent father; nor society, no
I did not request a single breath
or to give up the smallest winged feather.
I didn’t beg to for change, from a white goose in flight by instinct
into a self-aware shadow, my breath against a mirror, as my misty proof.
Why would I ask to be born,
when, perhaps, I rested, such unyielding and quiet marble
or, instead, a cloud adrift, creating shapes.
I did not seek this long, dark fall into disgrace,
as who, upon being asked, would seek a choice for failure or
for grace; who
dares to answer such a call
from even the most high, sacred thing of all?
Who could acquiesce into a helpless, mewling baby
so dependent on imperfect beings, also lost? So, I list, less brave than
those who may have answered firmly to the question, “Yes.”
Though I did not cry out to be born, and though at
times lifelessness calls long and gentle
through the marrow of my bones,
I also did not seek to be dead,
I desired not to live and not to die, at all.
Yet here I stand, steady on my feet. Each day
falls, sometimes restless, at other times replete,
and though I grew, loved and hated, fearless but small,
wrinkles collect at last like dander of pets, long buried under my toes.
Still, I cannot understand how I could ever give assent
to a maker who engraved upon my new sprung body both my birth and death date.
Although many whom I loved, on hearing the call, dove
steep over life, to nothing at all…. I will remember I
did not seek one lucid breath, one single step of this, yet
around me swirl all colors, shapes and sounds I am permitted
sense.
And still, there linger days in which I pretend I do not recognize my name.
I wonder what inside this world would have changed? Would
my son have been born to another mother, would my
husband have sought to find a different mate, would he have been
happier or sadder, would he have chosen flight beside me
like a homing pigeon, streaking above, instead?
I do not know, but I know this. Each birthday I gaze around
and wonder
, Did I ask for it? Or, did another fail before my place in
line, and I was beckoned forward into a life which sometimes doesn’t seem to
fit the shoes upon my feet? My head tilts weary as
I inspect my place. I’m tired and I
sense the space,
the one, the sleeping self, the less weary indemnity we term “Heaven.”
Perhaps, upon my death I’ll beg my coffin and my resting ground for mercy
instead; to turn me to a tree—a tall and quiet oak, spinning carbon dioxide
into oxygen. My being enacting photosynthesis, sprouting leaves
and seeds; resting, my feet will no longer walk, penetrating deep
into the earth. I will not breathe, nor think, I may
remember, but I will not speak. For I will hold my breath,
my shoots will drink the water from above, the nutrients beneath.
I’ll grow, straight tall and free; and if there is a single thought at all
it will never be:
Another birthday, to remind me, once afresh.
Anna
