Emily Dickinson, "Death"

On my father's latest illness as he lies for two weeks now in an ICU hospital bed still unable to come back to consciousness, weakened in body and mind, holding on to his 82 years of a full and worldly life, while this crisis takes its toll day by day.

In the end, we are all sweet forms of fruit ripening on the tree of time. Lovely, luscious and lustrous while we are in the sun. Yet, alas, the nocturnal rays of moonlight will follow day as night and the crepuscular rays constantly measure the length of our shadowy, amorphous, temporary time here on Mother Earth.

------------------------------------------------------------

Emily Dickinson, "Death"


Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.