Some Little Thoughts

When thoughts of death,
Like the pealing of a bell,
Permeate my night and mind,
I probe life gone by.
So little do I find.
I cry! I pray! I yell!
All to no avail:
I cannot quell that haunting bell. 

I try to sleep,
To shake off; to subdue that haunting chime
That invades my being, takes control of my sight.
What have I done to be rewarded so?
I cry! I pray! I experience fright!
All to no avail:
For crying, yelling, entreating, praying
Will not hound that penetrating sound. 

Looking back at eighty years:
Where has nobility gone?
Those ancient melodies: The old face.
Ideals of youth had to be replaced
And reverberations, all lost in space.
Memory fades as the mind degrades,
But when death comes, as it will,
There is no glade – no cooling shade. 

Old men recall those days of old,
When fiery tempers were exposed,
By boys and girls, all bent on good
Ideas, sadly, now deposed,
Replaced steel with rotting wood
Power buying to climb that glass tower,
But, when death comes,
It all comes to naught: Nobody escapes – all are caught. 

Ideas change as we mature,
We learn to bend, to alter our dispositions;
Life’s pressures dull ideas of contrition
As pragmatism enslaves all other thoughts
And man’s compelled by contradiction.
To live in a world of wealth, bereft of mental health,
Unthinking that the time will come
When the knelling of the bell will pall the final call. 

We learn to bend, to disassemble,
Ideals that once we knew were good;
Nature’s clock moves inexorably,
It steals creation and contemplation,
That perfect thief that produces naught, purposely,
Save decaying flesh, fuel for the sod:
The humbling command call of the bell,
On the day that life for man is Hell, like that swamp cedar that fell. 

Sadly, we learn there’s nothing wrong
In living in a world askew,
Where banal appetites are overpowering
And doing good was considered new.
Where man is selfish and thinks only of him,
Who strives for wealth to make him free,
But when death balances the books,
He leaves this earth, nakedly …  for eternity.