Bare fingers stretch the feeling-bands, the poet poseur,
Bakes his poems on a fire, he says, that blanches his heart:
A fire that blanches his heart, makes breathing hard and feeds his art.
Decades diseased, then death, of a friend.
She waited for it. She woke every morning half-ready,
Half-knowing her next day could also be last.
She waited patiently, as friends do for friends long lost,
Expected any moment from pools of oblivion return.
News reached me in time, they thought, not I.
In time to book my ticket and catch my plane.
In time to reach at her place before they took her to grave.
In time to tell the others that I was one of them.
How can anyone think that I, a man with a job
would manage at such short notice?
In time another call then came after death one more.
And time I could not find to go there one more time.
Thus told them one more time, I was not one of them.
Death has always been an interesting subject –
frightening but interesting.
