Finding himself dying
in a strange room:
Oscar Wilde exclaimed,“Either
this wallpaper goes or I do.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox
of Sicily, having seen things
that “make all my writings like straw,”
asked to have The Song of Solomon

read to him (from beginning to end)
and fessed up to sins
his confessor whispered were those
of a five year old child.

Voltaire cried, “Flames already?”
when someone lit a candle
near his deathbed; or
my favorite, Francois Villon’s

reply to the priest who,
expecting repentance,
requesting his last words
before Villon was hanged

got, “My head
is about to find out
how much my ass weighs.”
Will I be up for such

clever repartee, my last
sparring match, and if so,
with whom? God, I feel,
won’t really give a damn

about words (although,
hopefully, he’ll give something
of a damn about me), and my wife
will, more than likely, just

be waiting, patiently,
with love, I hope, and a touch
of remorse perhaps, but such
as won’t slow her down

for long, for moving slow
is not her style. Maybe,
I can come up with something apt:
staring at our gold statue

of Buddha, on my deathbed,
I might be tempted to say,
“I want to be like him when
I grow up,” and growing up,

quietly close my eyes and go away.

              -Minor