Hallelujah

Hallelujah! Hallelujah?

I’m hearing minor chords:

the awards this year are posthumous.

There is little old mortality this year

among the flowers cut down,

and yet…

My grandparents' generation died with

fewer candles on their last cake.

I remember a survivor clinging on

and unaware, stripped hollow

by the disease we’ll know

more intimately.

The lottery numbers reach a hundred

for us, we lucky few, bound to

chairs with wheels or not.

Should we not burn brighter

and shorter? Prefer our

candles of the Roman type?

These chords are played for those

we have loved, those admired,

and inspired by something as unknowable

as the number on our bullet,

as if the dying’s not theirs….

but ours.

Hallelujah? Hallelujah!

Pull out the organ stops and play,

each day may be our last

and last only as long as we enjoy it.

It is dying, it is part of life…

for all.