top of page
Writer's pictureglenhaney

Post-Mortem

In the year 2020 for fifteen minutes, I lay clinically dead on a hospital bed. That

Quarter hour, a smidgen of my 94 years, towers over me still. While my past lay

In shadows, my now had gone awry. There were no life flashbacks in that quarter


Hour. No celestial dirge nor joyous chorales piped in for the occasion. Dreams in

That hospital bed had spread a mist that hid what I did while lying there and

Introduced a future sutured with the past. I remember those dreams now in nights


Tight with fright, jostling in my mind. Recovery brought discovery of loss: I could

Not sign my name nor turn a page. I had misplaced the letter J on my keyboard!

But hunting and pecking brought victory. Out of that childish game flickered a tiny


Flame. I began pairing words that sounded better together than apart: Rhythm and

Rhymes. In my weakened condition, I was unable to resist. And the urge persists.

Writing is now the center of each carefully calibrated day.

Had the dramatic quiet of those fifteen minutes sensitized me to the joy of small

Sounds that surround? Or was it reflective of the quiet life of incubation before birth

Which I had now experienced for the second time?





40 views2 comments

2 Comments


winkgrelis
Feb 19, 2022

Awesome, Glen, that you're here to "tell the tale" with such powerful narrative and amazing insights.

Like

galbraith.susan
galbraith.susan
Feb 18, 2022

Fascinating, Glen - particularly the final stanza ....

Like
bottom of page