When Death Comes Calling

I wonder every day…

When Death comes calling,

Will I wish him the time of the day?

Shake his hand cordially and ask,

 ‘What can I do for you?

When he says.’ I have come to take you,’

Will I laugh and say,

‘My diary is full. My table is piled high.

I have hardly time to lift my head from work

Where will I go with you?’

When Death comes calling,

Will I run from him in panic?

Struggle and fight him so much

That he will be compelled

To bind me hand and foot?

When he says, ‘I have come to take you,’

Will I scream in terror?

‘No! No! No! I cannot go with you

I cannot leave my home, my people.

All I have built of wealth and eminence.’

When Death comes calling,

Will I welcome him with open arms?

Embrace him like a long-lost friend?

When he says, ‘I have come to take you,’

Will I say, ‘I am ready to go.

Erase my ‘I’ and fuse me in your vastness.

Make me nothing in the immense Everything’?

Death replies to me…

When I come calling,

You will say, ‘To resist change is my nature,

So resist you, I will.

But when I let go of my very nature

And be one with you,

I shall know true peace.

For Death is me and I am Death.’