Well, certainly sometime…
but I mean, am I dying soon?
like before my next birthday…
or even before I get to make love again…
(and these days, at my advanced age,
that might well be AFTER my next b- day),
and is that a good sign, or a bad sign?

Energy is low, even after I stopped my statins,
(which one of my five M.D.s says increases
an elderly male’s risk of a heart attack)
–btw, having 5 Docs is certainly a sign
of one’s impending demise.

All of my doctors are younger than I am.
Two of my doctors are younger
than my youngest child.
The ages given of the newly dead
in my local paper’s obits are half
older, half younger than I am, usually.

I am writing more verses than ever,
but fewer sonnets–am I preferring
free verse because it is faster?
Am I desperate to say what I have to say
before I can no longer think or speak?

There are times now I can no longer
see the grid of streets (as if from above)
in my home town. I make more wrong turns.
My dreams are more memorable than
many conversations. Nightmares
are more frequent–nightSTALLIONS
chase me till the dawn.

If death is like sleep, will I ever
really rest in peace?

• Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, written May, 2014, Published on Views from the Edge Dec. 15, 2015.

NOTE TO READERS: Steve has been diagnosed with a painful terminal cancer. They say people die the way they’ve lived. Steve is typically forthright about his condition. “I’m dying,” he says, as a simple matter of fact. As readers saw in his post about making sure the chair was there before you sit and the window open before your spit, his sense of humor is strong as ever. The size and length of his spirit exceeds his height of 6’8″ and his sleeve length. Would that we might all learn to die with dignity, grace, and humor.