Death, or something like it

DEATH, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

I left the light on in the kitchen
while I dozed in my chair….
Now that power is gone, wasted,
uncorrectable error.

A hummingbird’s trapped in my garage,
though I’ve lifted the door….
Frantic, it knows no way but upward,
while escape lies below.

The molting cardinal, head blackened,
comes seeking birdseed here….
Does he see himself in my window
and know what we call fear?

Some people fear the light burning out,
batteries too soon drained ….
With ointments and salves, they carry on,
complaining of the pain.

A psychoanalyst* calls dying
life’s “loneliest event”….
And in his book, he calls fear of death
“mother of all religion.”

What I fear is not death or dying,
but living out my death,**
walled off from mothers, fathers, children,
marking time to the end.

  *Yalom, Irvin D. (2010). Staring at the Sun. John Wiley & Sons.
**A phrase borrowed from Dunne, John Gregory (2005). True Confessions. Da Capo Press, Reprint edition.