Missing my old choir buddy who died last December. He always, always, stayed deeply involved in life. In his 80’s, having just beat his battle with cancer, he trained for our local crisis hotline and began counseling the suicidal and the abuse victim. Anyway, thought of him today in mass, and this poem began.
Why his clarity, his ocular spark,
so near does death's shadow creep?
Others, with near-dead eyes, long
encumbered by that dark shadow,
seem to have surrendered. What?
Something. That spark, that signal,
that engagement. Oddly, we note
both say similar words: "I'm
ready to die. Take me, any time,"
but our engaged example
has said it all his life.
33/100
all the voices in my head 