We Were Together … That Is Enough, I Tell Myself Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Join the living to those who have fallen
... te pito ora ki te pito mate


‘What is it like to die? ' my young son asks?

‘It is like living', I answer too quickly,

Part intuitively, partly flippantly -

Self-transparency in my response.

…



I will try harder.



I see myself as somehow the author

Of a story that is yet to find an ending:

Mysteriously entangled within the plot

As both its subject and its principal actor.



Be calm … articulate, I tell myself.



I see myself descending a stairway

Carefully negotiating each down tread

Fearful of any dreadful tumble ahead

That might take this still living stance away.



Don't slip … don't fall, I tell myself.



I see myself surfing probabilities

As successive treatments build and recede:

Still fortunate to be wave-riding steadily

The momentum of medical interventions.



Stand firm … don't flinch, I tell myself.



I see myself at the helm of a crewless vessel

Trying to bring her to land, to port, to quay -

Captain of the closing of this little history

Desperate to make all good, all equal.



Be alert … don't fail, I tell myself.



I see myself as a sad white-visaged clown

Left bobbing, waving my life's steering wheel -

Missing the bus, once the talk of the town -

My gash of a grin sometimes unnerving, unreal.



Keep smiling … its an act, I tell myself



I see myself as a nuisance to be resolved

Commonplace evidence of half-existence:

The residue from a cup that overflowed

The ashes of some flames that fortune kissed.



Bear up … there is love enough still.



I see myself knowing nothing of that finality -

Fearful of pain, the edging, encroaching none-self -

Not wanting to make a spectacle or a fool of myself

Hoping to redeem at the last some dignity.



No matter … there is no place for pride.



And if I answer too carelessly and too lightly

Take no harm from my answer. It is well meant -

For a transaction where the self itself is spent

But sparks of lovingness from this glow brightly.



We were together … that is enough, I tell myself.