By Many Names

Here’s the opening poem of my book The Ultimate Wonder, World Stories Illuminating Death. The offer for a free PDF or epub is still open if you make your request soon.

We know this mystery 
by many names.

One can enter the great beyond

or experience a demise.

Many see it as a passing

while some just decease.

Others find release 
in the expiry

while the living mourn the loss.

Some fear the end of life

while others see it just as The End.

The body prepares for dissolution

falling into oblivion at life’s termination

and expiration of all plans.

This annihilation
 from necrosis

is a parting and departure.

The way of all flesh leads to this destruction.

Many fear the doom and fight the exit.

But many welcome the afterlife.

The wise seek the quietus of extinction

and accept mortality, ready to meet

the Grim Reaper, Thanatos, or Azrael,

to answer the roll call

and pay their debt to nature.

All will cross the river, the bar,

and remove the veil to the Great Divide

for the grand adventure

to find eternal rest at the deep end

of the last roundup.

CURTAINS.

So we know death by its many names

from the womb to the tomb we all go.

Now I add

THE ULTIMATE WONDER.