On Life Departing by Deborah Jackson

In the graveyard of memory the zealots lurk,
desperate to claim the remnants of a lost soul.
Pillaging the thoughts like a brooding leech,
sucking us dry till naught but a shell remains.

Desperate in our hour of darkness we seek
to preserve that which we fear to lose.
Alas, we find that the very act itself unleashes
the demons that destroy it all.

If we could but leave it alone,
the faint trickles would grow,
seeding themselves deep in our minds
to grow deep and wild, changing ever.

It is not the loosing which we truly fear,
but the changing that is ever ongoing, ever unending.
The change is not harmful, though we fear it is so,
but it is the power of life that is found in us all.

For what is life, but the changing of forms?
From infant to adult, chrysalis to butterfly.
The change is frightening, yes, unknown and unbidden.
But, the result is as beautiful as what we once were.

To stifle the change is to make ourselves stagnant.
A sure sign of death, not unlike a dead pond
choked with weed and devoid of oxygen.
Are we to become that fishless quagmire?

But yet, if one were to look deeper
one could find life, for there is change.
The pond no longer exists, but in time
becomes a meadow brimming with color and life.

And so it shall be with us, dead or dying,
A stagnant pond that shall one day rise
and become a meadow, colorful and filled with life.
No longer what we once were, but yet something just as grand.