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Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Fingers of Death

Dead Rose by Jiri Hodan


Death first brushed
His bony fingers
Through my world
When I was a child,
Leaving a vague sense of sadness
In a girl too young
to comprehend such finality.
As I grew older,
Those bony fingers
Touched my life again,
My grief intermingling
With teenage angst.
These days the fingers of death
Have me firmly in their grasp,
Plucking away loved ones
With unrelenting impunity,
An insidious caress
That continues to tighten
And one day will reduce me
To little more than dust.


~~~ This poem was written for a prompt from Poetic Bloomings for their poetic memoir series, this time asking us to write about the our first experience with death.

2 comments:

Susan said...

"Death first brushed
His bony fingers
Through my world"

A totally effective personification and suggested metaphor that your world is a head of hair. Gosh. Mortality to me is a blessing, but that may be because I am only 2/3 of the way there.

"An insidious caress
That continues to tighten"

This is sobering. Very. When I think I would prefer a quick death
I also think of how Doug left me with a massive heart attack. No. I want to prepare, to leave with dignity.

Mary said...

Yes, as we grow older, death definitely seems to make many more visits to our surroundings. And..one day...will knock on each of our doors. Death plays no favorites.