Can someone tell me
What it is
to live?
Dying seems easy,
An every-day event
And like weddings,
or birth,
adorned with flowers,
gifts like love, respect,
and memories,
so many silver spoonfuls
of memories.

Now I have seen it
so many times,
the old,
the young,
the kin,
the stranger...
In war
And peace,
In feast
And famine.
With duty,
with a duty of care,
an onlooker
full of compassion...
every-way
imaginable.

In places undreamed,
In inevitable areas...

In the family pews
On rainy dismal days,
And on the faraway ghats
Before a hot afternoon;
each experience
leaving a feeling
that one shouldn't be there.

Now everyone has packed
and shuffled,
And I have wrung my hands
for the last time,
I tell myself
unconvinced.

Now that everyone
has left me
In this landscape,
I look around
And recognise
nothing.

Age does not matter,
each one
an orphan,
each telling themselves
that it is for the last time...

Lead me away
from that funereal path
where they all are
and are not,
simultaneously;
something else
awaits me, down this byway,
across a different track,
In a different part of the mountain.