Look upon me soon as one who was here a long while, wandering this wide country, and who saw many a man die great in pain and misery, or simply drain of life. I know the silence that shrouds a family when death is announced and just as suddenly leaves the room somehow emptier. My exit will no doubt be louder since I’m known to yawp. Those who I’ve helped by easing their burden are not forgotten, unwept over, or abandoned to dull graves. Nor are hospitals factories where the dead are manufactured and delivered elsewhere to morgues. Not the ones I’ve worked, or where I presently reside, restless, but wasn’t I always? I’ve suffered a few whacks. The doctors call them strokes. But I remain committed to my lifelong poem and celebrate the final edition that supersedes all. Truth be, I’d much rather have a mud bath followed by an immersion in a cold spring. That is my ease. What comforts now is memories. Real or ones wished for and never received matters not. My mother too recently dead. Long-lived, I am of her stock and boundaries. Both explorers of the unknown, the unimaginable. I honor her absence as she will surely mine. The doctors talk as if I’m not here, uttering words such as pleurisy, diminished lung capacity, TB, multiple strokes, and nephritis. They must’ve assumed deafness as well. I know I shall not be here next year for my birthday. Unlike my older brother Edward, I apparently will die soon enough at my house at 328 Mickle Street. to please those who document and detail such things. Might I suggest they add boredom and monotony to the death list? The notable exception - Warry. The sailor boy of good nature. He of handsome biblical charity. Warren “Warry” Fritzinger. He has it in full. Here now to see my safe passage beyond. Not hurrying about like a nest of red ants freshly disturbed by an aimless boot sole. Even our dog named Watch comes when he calls. Mr. Whitman, he calls me, just as he names Mrs. Davis, housekeeper once, now co-caretaker, Ma’am, unfailingly. He’s such a kind one, Warry. I tug the bell pull he installed, so handy he is in many a way, and either he or Mrs. Davis would be there to turn me on my water mattress, but usually he, saying I sounded like the sea splashing against a ship’s hull. A line I wish I’d written. Even so I’m much satisfied with the last version of my life’s work. It’s been a long wandering and I ‘ve had the luxury of loving and being loved, and not being alone too long. I’ve traveled wide and seen much of this worldly earth. The many I’ve known, the many I’ve met along the happy road, all call out for embrace. I’d be a scoundrel to’ve not heard, not to’ve listened to their entreaties.
My life is passing. Has passed. “Warry! Shift!”
Richard Weaver still volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, and was, until Covid, the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. He remains the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press), and provided the libretto for the symphony, Of Sea and Stars, performed 4 times to date.