CANDY BARS (Heiku)

 

Happy memories

The candy bars of old age

I can’t get enough

 

 

 

 

CONSIDERING DEATH

 

When my body cries out

in endless pain

or thinking begins to fade

from a crumbling brain,

can I plunge into the Styx

or must I wait for God

to provide a terminal fix

 

Thomas More wrote in UTOPIA: (1516) that a person afflicted with disease can "free himself from this bitter life…since by death he will put an end not to enjoyment but to torture… it will be a pious and holy action".

 

 

 

BOUND FOREVER

 

 

Could there have been another

equally as captivating for my life

as you

Perhaps, but I’ll never know

since we were bound together

forever

by an indefinable potion:

Our love

 

 

LINGERING LIFE

 

        Forget the quality of life

          A mere spark

          in a near corpse

          is reason enough

          for some doctors

and relatives

to continue on

          with feeding tubes

          and liquid drips

          because life is precious

          even when there is

          no apparent joy

          in this still living Being

          After all, miracles happen

          After all, Lasarus was raised

 

 

WRITER'S BLOCK

 

 

 

Inspiration, where are you?

Hidden in a recess of my brain

dangling teasingly out of reach?

Just give me an enticing idea

Hopefully, even a tiny spark

will stir me to write again

AT 91

 

At ninety-one,

seventy-year-olds seem so young

because at that wonderful time

my body was strong and graceful

not aching with collapsing legs

So, seventy-year-olds,

who are in good shape,

revel in your youth

           ninety-one is coming 

GHOST

 

I awoke

My dead wife

stood in the doorway

of our bedroom

To see me?

To fetch me?

I wondered

if this were a sign

she missed me

as much as I do her