Dead Poet’s Society

On the morning I died
I was listening to…Miles…

Not to Miles in fact
but to Lee Konitz.
I suspect you don’t know
Lee Konitz, so I’ll default
to Miles and give you
some peace,
a picture to hang on to,
a soundtrack
you don’t have to think about
for the first time.

On the morning I died
I was writing.

What I was writing
of course remains
unfinished.  I’d prefer it
to be discarded.
It was just getting to a boil.
It wasn’t ready.
It wasn’t ready.

At the moment I began to die
I looked out the window.

Must I explain everything?
Will I be explaining everything
to each of you forever?
I looked out the window.
There was a shadow crossing the yard.
A large bird, a dog I just missed seeing.
It doesn’t have to mean a thing:
just a man about to die
noticed something outside
and did not recognize
what it was.

As I began to die I came up
with the next line I should write.

I came back just to tell you
that all of us end with our last line
appearing in our heads, but it feels like
just the next line.
It has no portent or finality,
just feels like a line
you should have done something with years ago
but you never had the right
place to put it.

And then…I died.

That’s it.  I died,
some stuff done,
some undone.
I got the perfect line.
I have the place for it now.
The best words.
The best order.
You’ll do the same someday.

Until then consider me
the incinerated
in the distance,
on a breeze,
vanishing.

Don’t ask for more.