Belated Words

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My Fortieth Year…3:47 A.M.

Written by

Leo

in

There were footsteps outside my door last night;

loose gravel crunched, there was a catch in a gait.

Something stood squinting in the darkness

checking a number or matching a date.

My heart ran rampant, throbbing, pumping dread;

an emptying slash…..now a cavernous hollow.

Opened now……anti-being knows my smell;

when will it beckon for me to follow?

I was actually 40 before I seriously considered and accepted the concept of mortality.  I awoke in the middle of the night with the most horrid feeling which haunted me for days.  This poem was an effort many, many years  ago to put words to it.  This feeling initiated the clichéd “mid-life crisis” which I quickly and completely recovered from…I’m now content, accepting and at ease.

Comments

5 responses to “My Fortieth Year…3:47 A.M.”

  1. Jeremy Nathan Marks Avatar
    Jeremy Nathan Marks

    I am 33 and I have been “encountering” that feeling increasingly over the last several years. I think it really started to touch me as early as 28 but something has shifted in the last couple of years. I feel like I see the natural world -esecially the seasons and the way the seasons alter and are altering- as a narrative, a time lapse of my own life.

    Reply
    1. Leo Avatar
      Leo

      I can’t explain or know why my crisis period passed so quickly; it was not religion. I respect others’ beliefs but it does little for me..I feel a kinship, in some respects, to transcendentalism, in that, I feel we and nature are all and the same and if divinity exist it is part of us and nature. I’m a great admirer of HDT…I guess that says it all.

      Reply
      1. Jeremy Nathan Marks Avatar
        Jeremy Nathan Marks

        I have a similar feeling about the world. I have found that my own sense of temporality has been informed by watching the world change (the seasons have always deeply moved me). I also have watched my memory grow and that has had an impact too: I can see seasons of my life behind me, ahead of me and at present.

  2. Pat Avatar
    Pat

    I didn’t know I was mortal until my sister died. She died young and was younger than me. With both parents dead too, I was it. The top of the tree.
    And I don’t like heights. Mortal indeed.

    Reply
    1. Leo Avatar
      Leo

      Thank you for visiting , Pat. I checked out your blogs and plan to read some on your novel and the short stories. I’ve written two short stories and am working on another on and off with the poems. Little by little it’s becoming easier or perhaps I just feel more confident. Thanks again. Leo

      Reply

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