Near-Death Experience

How many people have the sense
to know that all of one’s long life
is a near-death experience—
a stroll on the edge of a knife?
Death walks alongside us, always,
an escort with a cheerless grin;
he may wander, too, but he stays
within arm’s length—closer than kin.
Like your shadow, he lingers by,
unshakably close, day to day:
how fast you run, or far you fly,
means nothing, for he does not stray.
So tip your hat to the Reaper,
for he is a true lifelong friend,
though your wife may be a keeper,
Death stays with you, from start to end.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s