Mortality
Is this an abstract noun? It doesn’t feel abstract.
It feels like a scared young soldier marching into a rain of bullets.
It feels like desperate refugees swallowing the sea as they splash in frigid, salty, turbulent water.
It feels like bricks and mortar crushing skulls as bombs drop and explode.
It feels like tubes, needles, machines that beep and flash, people yelling, and rib cages cracking as chests are pummeled
It feels loud, angry, terrifying.
How could it feel?
Like a soft bed, warm sheets, and cool pillows
The feel of a friend’s hand.
Softly spoken words of love
Warmth of gratitude for a life well-lived
Beloved music, lifting to another dimension
Eyes that say I love you,
The final pages of a favourite book
Like a garden full of sweet peas and ripe plums ready for harvest
Like a graceful dance that ends with bows and smiles and thanks.
Please don’t axe the old tree down.
And please don’t force it to stand, braced against the hurricane, when it’s ready to fall.
Let the old tree crumble and lie where it has lived,
Let seeds fall from above and take root in its fallen trunk.
Let birds make their nests in the new tree’s boughs.
In this gentle way, mortality becomes immortality.
Amber Harvey November 16, 2021