Large Fierce Mammal

This poem was inspired by a combination of actual events – some of my own experience, and others reported to me. The character of Death came from a brief encounter with a striking black gent who strode through the front door of the Bridgewater South Shore Regional Hospital one cold morning while Mrs. LFM and I were leaving. He was an older man … I’d say early sixties. Well muscled and obviously very fit, he carried a black cane even though he showed no sign of lameness in his spirited gait, was wearing a well fitted black T-shirt, black trousers, black belt and shoes … black everything except for his close cropped hair and well trimmed beard which were brilliantly white. His clothes belied the frigid day, like he didn’t care. He was all business and paid no attention to those around him, including Me and Mrs. LFM.

Just before we exited the building I looked back and saw he was about to turn the corner at the end of the hallway that led to the laboratory area. At that moment, he paused, looked straight at me, smiled, and saluted me with his cane. When I described him later to Mrs. LFM, I learned that she hadn’t noticed him.

This is a story of a man who believes he is doomed to an agonizing death, and his last True Friend.

Death Comes to Call

By LFM

The morning blood test crowd arrives.
Today I’ll help a life to end.
Bad coffee fills my empty heart
As I prepare to kill my friend.

He’s begged for death down paths of pain.
He’s ploughed as far as he can plough.
From vigil kept two nights and days,
My promise once has come to now.

So here I sit, my cup near spent,
A gift bestowed by drug-ged sleep,
Ready ere my Friend awakes
To end his pain. My promise keep.

I drain my cup and take my feet
Just as a man comes through the door.
I cannot tear my eyes from him,
But know we’ve never met before.

Hair and beard of snowy white.
Clothes as black as black can be.
T’is just before he leaves my sight
He turns and smiles straight back at me.

I shake my head and think it strange,
But I’ve a mission to complete.
The stairway where the stranger went
I travel too on weary feet.

My Friend absolved me of my pledge.
While I was gone he’d quickly died.
Death had heard my silent prayer,
And that is what I know inside.