Death of a Beloved- Maya

Alone in the house

for a week,

I thought about it.

What if this were

my permanent condition?

Not a little break, a respite,

a rare chance for solitude,

but the way, the state of being,

the everyday condition.

Finding the house locked up

every day when

I get home from work.

No one to cook for.

The handyman chores hired out

or left undone.

 

It is not a question

of maybe,

but rather one of when.

And who.

 

For one of us

will face this.

Jane Kenyon knew it. 

She wrote –

One day it will be otherwise -

And it was,

for her and Donald Hall,

she succumbing to leukemia,

and he left to write

his poems alone.

 

I loved this week,

the house quiet and all mine.

No struggling over who

gets to use the iMac now.

Cooking and eating

what I wanted

when I wanted it.

Peaceful late afternoons

in the hammock.

 

But always, always,

lurking somewhere

in my mind, the knowledge

that what is treasured now

could be despised later.

 

The death of a beloved,

a ghost of the future

haunting the house.

Maya, 8/29/09, Prompt: Death of a Beloved