Sunday, June 19, 2016

The Little Death


photo by Marnie Creamer


Death says to Night,
"I do not always come at two a.m., you know.
Sometimes it's 11:15 in the morning.
Just depends on when the moving hand has writ*."

Night replies, "Every midnight,
when they close their eyes
and enter the little death* of sleep,
they are practising
for the moment
you arrive."


* "The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on." Omar Khayyam.
* the little death ascribed to Arthur Schopenhauer. I next went to read the other poems and discovered that jabblog and I had the same idea and even a shared quote. Synchronicity.

For the Sunday Mini Challenge at Real Toads: The Sisters - Death and Night. (Formidable sisters!) Do check it out. There are some wonderful responses to this prompt.

12 comments:

  1. So ture and we should be ready for snything taht iso n the plate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The thought of practicing for that final moment is excellent...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hopefully Death will arrive in similar fashion.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love Death's insouciance, 'I do not always come at two a.m., you know' - better be prepared!

    ReplyDelete
  5. So interesting, the idea of sleep being a little death. We all appreciate sleep but fear death.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A beautiful poem! We do not know the time, thank goodness.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yes, this echoes all the feelings that night and death seem to share--last lines are especially pertinent and sharp. Life rehearses us for death, with sleep.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You and Bjorn seem to have been swimming in the same waters for this prompt, and I love it. Just like I said about his poem, If night/sleep is practice, then death might be full of wondrous dreams.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've put my order in to pass from the little death of sleep directly into the 'moment' when Death arrives.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh my Sherry, you have handled this challenge fabulously.

    ReplyDelete
  11. How out of practice I am! My little death is so interspersed with periods of wakefulness that it's a wonder that Death knows my address!

    ReplyDelete
  12. This is thought-provoking, Sherry, and quite eerie...thinking about going to sleep each night as a 'little death.'

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for visiting. I appreciate it and will return your visit soon.