an epitaph

Book Of Days

and when my final hours are counted,
where will i be?

at this desk, jotting verse,

drinking wine?

will there be

a final sigh,

knowing

the obit won't mention,

the long ride away from my children,

the empty apartment i rented in a strange city,

eating nothing but peanuts for months on end,

losing 36 pounds in less than a year,

the solace i found in a cigarette before bed,

lying alone on a mattress,

on an uneven floor,

in a bedroom without furniture,

staring out a window with no blind,

watching the moths' unemotional devotion

to a cheap, bare bulb, courtyard light,

and thinking outloud,

"I am fucked."

but,

it will all be there

page after page

in the lines scribed

across the loose-leaf white

of my death-calm face

seemingly lost,

forgotten chapters

of an unfinished novel

finding their way

to the other side of the wind

the book of days

they will bury me with

Cast a cold eye on Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by. --- W.B.Yeats epitaph