As part of my celebration of National Poetry Month, I asked my Facebook friends to provide me with some words they'd like to see in a poem. Seven lovely women participated and provided me with the following words: Acceptance, Open, Mortality, Enough, Joy, Family, Harmony and Ηρεμία.
To Lisa, Karlette, Maria, Andriani, Mary Beth, Anne, and Tina, whose words inspired this poem, you have my deepest gratitude. I hope this is as meaningful for you as it is for me.
Inevitable
I don’t accept time as a structure relative to my existence.
My life’s sands are contained in an hourglass of unknown volume—
pass through a waist of unknown circumference
at an indeterminate rate relative to when I began.
Yet, from some beginning before mine,
minutes tick away at a pace not relative
nor relevant to any part of me that is persistent.
I never agreed to be bound to measurements constructed
by the inventors of clocks and calendars.
I would prefer they be eliminated.
Mortality is the frame, the finite parameter
that marks the end of my confinement to earth, to family, to body—
all of which I will abandon when it is my time
to return the gift to the giver.
Every movement is done toward this horizon—
it keeps my eyes joyfully open, my heart open to accept,
to embrace that which is within boundary of my allotment.
When the flurry of gamma waves and synapse reactions
initiate my transformation—when the bestowal
of my ηρεμία, my tranquility, comes
I only hope it will be enough to understand
the harmonious nature of the inevitable.
I'm speechless! Bravo!