geneology. billycollins.

I could spend a week bicycling

through the pages of a long novel

ringing my bell at the end of every chapter,

or I can squander a summer holding

a garden hose in one hand and a drink in the other.

In other words, I can set my mind on Aimless

and let go of the wheel,

but the minute I pick up a pen

all I can think about is death and more death.

Sometimes, I rotate the notion of it

like a geometric figure.

Other times it seems a thing left out in the rain.

And when I think of death and me,

I used to picture a boy and his bad uncle,

for I once thought I would be unhappy

to leave the world,

its clouds and hedges, its snow and long embraces.

But today, with a pen propped in my hand

and the windows gray with rain,

I feel eager to join the dead,

those ghostly multitudes milling in eternity.

What a thrill to enter into their midst,

to be the subject of their eerie scrutiny,

their blank, lotus-eating faces,

their pale white shoulders pressed together.

And how happy I will be to join the dead of Ireland

where the tree of my father grew in the lanes

of the city of Cork and in the lanes of time.

And happy, also, to join the dead of Uist,

one of the smaller Outer Hebrides

where those who brought forth my mother,

without even knowing it

inhabited an island of little but wind, rock, and sheep

before they fell down in their tracks,

closed their eyes in bed,

or were tossed over the side of a small boat

by a deep swell or a sudden sideways wave.

Oh noble, world-scarred company,

soon to be my company forever,

cousins and strangers alike,

I am putting down my pen and walking out

with a scissors to the garden, crazy with flowers.