He feels like he hadn’t noticed he was dying.
All this bad news: a plague, a disease, a virus.
Hospitalized, quarantined, forced into hibernation.
Down to the ‘essentials’, bedded down, on life support.
Fixated on the cellphone, the laptop, the ‘news’.
How are the vital signs, the stats, the numbers?
Imprisoned in this prism, this hall of mirrors and lies.
There’s been flowers of course, new input into the garden.
Seeds become seedlings, pot-plants flowering, harvesting.
Surrounded by beauty, he dreams lazily on this deathbed.
He’s not really allowed to see anyone, but they come,
Keeping their distance, respectful silences and smalltalk.
His body aches, strains to hear the doctors in the hall.
Whispering, conspiring, working hard on his behalf.
He shouldn’t bother them, but he grows anxious listening.
‘Infection rate, chance of dying, no resuscitation order.’
Seems like there’s no coming back to life.
Friends at a distance, no hugs, no touch, a mask on.
Apparently there’s new orders and visit restrictions.
The roads are emptying, it’s every man for himself.
Some refute, they mock, drinking in the halls of their friends.
But at Calvary Hospital the chimney at the morgue is smoking.
He gasps for breath but his lungs heave and burn.
He calls for the doctor, why am I abandoned!
But the doctor is busy, the nurse comes, holds his hand.
In the distance the crows crowd and cackle on the hill.
He is pinned, machines beep, then there is no beeping.
The nurses take his body into the garden.
They wrap him in long cloths after his body is washed.
The light lingers over the body of Christ.
He is lifted and welcomed into the place
Where new seeds lay asleep in the garden.

10-4-2020