In a house awaiting death,
No Monday coming,
No thing to do but wait,
No sudden joys anticipate,
No early chores to distract,
Just careful sitting back,
In breathless Sunday slack.

Though they will not stay long,
Nor, either shall I linger on.
Their bucking days are gone;

Somehow they've reconciled
To be companions and my friends
After years of push and pull between us.

Old Horses are the best,
Quiet now, and patient,
More content to stand or ride,
Which fills me with content.

I find myself thinking
Everything feels like Sunday
With no choir,
No homily,
No audible absolution.

No Monday in sight, nor Tuesday,
Though the sanitation truck appears
To let us know that time goes on,
That effluent must run to sea,
That wages must be paid,
That sidewalks must be cleared
Of dust or falling snow,
Though we ourselves
Are growing cold.
So it is we dwindle.

Could leave this world peaceful and shriven,
Be glad somehow those old debts of mine
Must now be ledgered and forgiven.

Watching loved ones work their sad old days
The land of death now beckons and sobers me
Enough to think I will follow in their way;
And to consider how I might leave free.

Of more than the sins Jesus has taken,
And more than payments owed to friends.
No, how to leave a sweetness unshaken
In my loved ones, my wife, and my kin?

I think I've some letters I need to compose,
Some arguments I've held too close to me,
And any odd embroilment that rose
While I was on my earthly power spree.

I'm 65, a scant ten years from average death
Of men my type and height and weight.
I'm sobering quickly as I count my breath
And know re-calibrating cannot wait.

We leave not in shouting, not in banging;
Rather, we leave whimpering, most of us.
Forgetting what we thought important,
The gut ache and the nagging cough
From us wrench sentience.

The dimming sounds, the fading lights
Take one-time treasures, held so dear,
Move them away, far out of mind.
What little hold we fast, we cannot think
To speak, though children lean in close.

This is how we leave.

"As I Stand on the Threshold"
is real,
is honest,
is every person's experience
before stepping free of scaffolds,
before learning to soar.

I can remember those same fears
on the marge of marriage,
on the receipt of my teaching license,
on the induction into leadership,
on the arrival of pregnancy,
on the realization that my parents were gone,
and that when voices asked for advice,
the eyes were looking to me....

All will be well.

When I am gone, oh, let me take my rest
On a plot of land where trees are blessed
To spread their branches, push out their leaves
Above the silent dead to comfort those who grieve

Beneath outstretching limbs let me lie in shade,
Perhaps along some hidden mountain glade
Where deer can browse on meadow grass
That shimmers or shivers as seasons pass.

Let old roots penetrate my loam and grow
Tall and straight as pines or crooked as old oaks,
Store house for squirrels, nest home for wrens,
Protection from the cold and owl along the glen.

Beneath a forest of varied green and steady brown
Let me lie in peace outside some town
Visited only by gentle rain and silent snow
At home with God, and unaware of winds that blow.