Unseemly
Dr. Lloyd Jacobs
When I reached the psalmist’s allotted seventy
I resolved
to not let the history of my life
be marred
by unseemly minutes at its end.
To die
when the hunkering of winter has passed
and on a summer day when the sun
mixes with
warm rain and the voice of quiet thunder,
when the ground is soft for interment.
It is unseemly
when the dying old are dragged sniveling and pissing
to their inevitable end by white coated voyeurs
secretly complicit with ignominy and pain.
Better to die on an easeful day in summer
when a spirit of volition may be summoned.
Dr. Lloyd Jacobs is President Emeritus of the University of Toledo, he has published 3 collections of poetry, previously he was a professor of vascular surgery at the University of Michigan.
