Memento Mori We must have talked about an hour or so. I hadn’t heard from him in several weeks, And something in his voice at times would creak, Would falter, stop, not quite sure where to go. He talked about his body now as though It were no longer his, a thing oblique Determined only by its pains and bleak Forebodings based on what the doctors know. Then suddenly my own death hovered near (Appalling, how it seems to lie in wait And pounces at the faintest whiff of fear…). My dead in memory did congregate To point my halting soul toward that austere Horizon I’m so loath to contemplate.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, America Magazine, U.S. Catholic, Pensive, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.
Amethyst Review 