poem

 Death Day

Like birthdays, everyone gets a deathday

Lucky is the man who senses its arrival

Usually by then he’s old enough

To have lost all interest in birthdays,

That old traditional occasion

By which we celebrate the living

With gatherings and balloons 

And presents and cakes

And so he meets this new dawning 

With unexpected excitement 

Grateful to have been gifted

So much unearned life 

That even the end could be celebrated

Knowing it is a celebration

He will only get to experience once.

But nobody ever celebrates a death day 

When we’re gone, preferring the old

Familiarity with the day we were born 

To mark the memory of their mourning.

Most survivors can’t even remember 

The exact day their loved one died. 

My mom visits the grave of her mother

Every year on her mother’s birthday.

What about the day she died, I ask

When was that? And what was it like?

Oh, I don’t know, she says.  It was cold.

It must have been winter

I’m happy to start a new tradition

Where we celebrate the actual deathday

Not like we would a birthday, of course

With the humble good cheer, smiles and bonhomie

Nor does it have to be

So dreary and somber gray 

Hours in the stacks of the university library

On a Saturday night preparing a 10 page paper 

On the ceaseless nature of human suffering.

No, the target is somewhere in between.

Instead of ice cream and cake

We suck on fingers of ginger.

Instead of ribbons and bows

Everything is as beautiful 

As it is.

Instead of gifts 

An old empty wallet pressed

In the shape of his bony hips. 

Instead of singing happy deathday

Someone tells the story of the rental

Car lost in the maze of Madrid

Set to the swing

Of a Bourbon St dirge.

Instead of blowing out the candles

We let the fires burn all night.

9/17/26