We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

20.10.25

I Contemplate My Approaching Death

 

I get older and older, and it looms

or seems to. And so I start to wonder,

when will the night descend? In the meantime,

how shall I go on, keep my good comfort

and the remaining pleasures of my days?


My niece in Castlemaine, son in Melbourne,

if asked, might want to house and care for me

(and I could pay them most of my pension). 

In both cities, old friends … keep ageing too.

I choose (once more): here. The rivers, mountains …




Written for Poets and Storytellers United, at Friday Writings #200: To the Power of Ten.  Any 10-line poem is called a decastitch. This specific version, unrhymed and with also 10 syllables per line, is known as the Ten-by-Ten. It's supposed to be one stanza only, but mine fell naturally into two, so I am calling it a Ten-by-Ten variant. 






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