Musings on Mortality | Teen Ink

Musings on Mortality

June 17, 2017
By Leah.A BRONZE, Rockaway, New Jersey
Leah.A BRONZE, Rockaway, New Jersey
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

I sit outside and I am surrounded by life
The air, I smell, is sweet with newly bloomed flowers
A field of bright welcoming colors
I spread my fingers through soft grass
There is a peace, a spirituality to this nature

It is beautiful

It is wrong
If not for the stones which marked it, I would never have known this was a graveyard
Valleys full of dull lost souls
and I never would have known

Something about that makes me furious

My thoughts grab hold of my frustration, my anger
and I let them run
I am brought to a single sentiment:

“Nearing our end, and left to weep
When our bodies do crack
Embarking on that final sleep
All things will fade to black”


Black

The funeral always dresses in black
Black like the dark behind endlessly closed eyes
Black like ashes and storm clouds
Heavy as the downpour

I could take the weight of the rain,
the weight of all the tears and all the sadness in the world
But I could never handle the weight of such bright, beautiful light
peering from a poorly placed smile
Nature whispers the most alluring lies


Under my feet,
the grass is a blanket tucked neatly into the graves
Not as a comfort, I think
but more as a concealment

Ghosts of the dead follow us and in turn
we follow them
A dreary cycle
but not one without truth
not one coated in deception

I shiver against the icy warmth

“Nature can be uncaring and absolute”
I tell the sky

Because the titans did fall
Kings and queens of old passed by
and even Achilles with his ensured immortality,
did meet his end
Death will always follow our world
Eras packed tightly beneath the dirt
And Nature stands, unmoved
with its lovely, unblemished appearance

I turn my attention

Beyond the graveyard lies a street of thundering cars
Woosh! They zoom loudly by, this way and that
always needing to get to some place faster


In my mind I see cities paved over the dead
filled with colorful flashing lights
A grave situation

And that too is wrong

A paved road twists through this field
sweeping so close, it touches the graves
Their ghosts cry and reach out,
spirits around us, disillusioned with us

And my thoughts sing cruelly:

“Progress finds a new solution
Looming shadows hang overhead
A technological evolution
As we on Earth forget our dead”

Will we then lose the essence of life?
A fleeting moment, cherished

Could this graveyard, too
be toppled and covered?

Nature may not be kind
but that does not make it ignorant

Nature will not forget the value of life,
the value in death

“Life, itself, is deadly”

A poignant thought
among musings
of graves and bright summer days


The author's comments:

There's something about those unexpected thoughts that can pass through on a summer's day. This poem is a sort of stream-of-consiousness, catalouging some of these such musings.


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