On the morning of the day that I die

On the morning of the day that I die,
I will lie awake in bed for a bit,
holding my wife and adoring every snore
and twitch that arises from her good deep sleep.

On the morning of the day that I die,
I will find that, against all odds and
vagaries of illness and accident, I managed
to outlive the goldfish who resided in the bathroom tank.

By noon of the day that I die,
I will have held all my children close to me,
from in my arms to in my lap to by my side
to eye to eye, tall as I, my children no longer mine.

At lunch on the day that I die,
I will enjoy some pad Thai, and not because
it rhymes, but for its slippery saltiness
and heat, O the heat, of the sauce.

Sometime on the day that I die,
I will exercise for the sheer joy of it and not
think once, not once, I say, of its cardiovascular
benefit, nor of the calories that I am burning.

And at close of day when I die,
I will shower, slowly just this once,
and touch every scar I can reach, and recall
every easy and every bitter victory that this body wrought.

At the end of the day that I die,
I will sit in the most memory-cluttered
part of my home, and I will decide
to freely let it all go, to not fight the loss.

I will lift up my eyes on the day that I die
to my God, and I will indeed say, "It is well,"
and I will surrender to the ages,
and I will leave this. I will fly.

19 December 2011