~

til just now
i never understood...
why his memoirs,
a man might
to page inscribe,
his own on stone,
an epitaph write;
for far too oft’
“historians”
will resurrect,
dots the decedent
never did connect.

which leads those living
to believe,
our story isn't
what we think to leave,
but is subject to revision,
with no defense
nor cross examination,
posthumously changing
legacy to fallacy,
one’s heritage
to poverty abject,
and of
character bereft.

for the dead
can tell no tales.
so if the story
isn’t written down,
and e’en at times
when it is,
the living tell
what e’re they
wish to sell.

so write i say...
of the truth,
of certain quell
any question to dispel,
to thine own
thou must be true;
thou alone
canst know thyself;
so write your story,
and write it well!

~

*post script.

watching a documentary this weekend on
one of our nation’s founding families
made me realize that our deeds
and our words are recycled
like thread into a loom
of another’s making,
weaving a tapestry of
someone else’s interpretation;
any rebuttal thereto being
either useless or impossible.
which begs the question,
if the old adage then is true,
“dead men tell no tales,”
did they leave off the ending
“but the living sure do?”