Lonnie Hicks - Death Dies Again

It was death himself
at my swords tip
shocked at his predicament
unaccustomed as he was
to insouciance
and unfamiliar he was
with his own impending ending.

How do you tell Death that
his own death comes?

He said.
'How am I to meet
alls end this way
when I am the very symbol
of the terminus;
the end for all and the other many? '

'Tell me how I am come to this end;
the irony of my own dead death
now near? '

'Death must die' I said
as life itself begins'

'Its not so mysterious Death
to understand.
You are not the end but
my own beginning
and I am life's insistence at the beginning;
that coming to the fore
youth moving to sure
and steady borning.

'That is the cycle of all things, '
I said.
'You die death;
not a sad departing
but my own new beginning.

'How sad' Death said
'I understand your glib reckoning
but my death to me is personal
and while the Great Cycle
to you is mesmerizing
for me it is my fully sensed ending.

Endings are personal and while
loves I've known
have found new loves
it has not
and did not
obliterate
old love's ending.
And that is I.

Old loves die
and their death
is not erased
by new love's
beginning;
they fade
away amid the sad
sighings
we hear at night
when alone
in our beds

in the dark
crying.

Lonnie Hicks

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-dies-again/