The Deathbed Boy

The boy lay sick in bed
on a balmy summer’s day;
though his sister went to play,
Death loomed above his head.
He asked his mother that same day
what made him deathly ill,
and why his Sister frolicked, still,
while he wasted away.

He looked out from his window
to the grassy field outside;
at his sister's sight he dared to cry
that he had reached his low.
His mother gave the answer long:
“It’s mere fortune of fate;
it does not choose nor does it wait,
it knows not right or wrong.

“Though such a young man as you are
ought not to have this plight,
fate is bound to drop its might
without a thought or care”.
He fully heard his mother
and so turned his head to nod,
although he thought it odd
that fate declined another.

His skin clung tightly to his bone
with nothing inbetween —
one with working eyes could glean
that he was not for long.
He stared out through his vacant eyes
— empty voids in rings of blue —
with pensive face, as if he knew
that he could always die.

“What point is there in living
without leaving but a trace:
when I with Death meet face-to-face,
I haven't done a giving.
I'll be a wholly useless matter
in half a decade's time;
I'll be less than worth a dime
before I've clumb the ladder.

“I’ll hardly be a person
past ‘the sickly boy who died’.
Will I be known on either side
I'll go to when I'm gone?
Who’ll sweep by once it's my time:
Satan in his wretched wagon,
or angels in sweet chariot?
And will they come after I die?

“Are there really sides immortal
as you, my mama, say;
or do the dead rest in their graves
in an endless slumber restful?
Where do all the souls and minds
for babies like my sisters come?
Are all these new souls taken from
the dead after they die?”

Then he tired laid his head,
closed his eyes
in wait to die,
and sunk into the bed.
Soon the father came back home
to prepare for him a grave;
but he and all the others craved
to know where he had gone.

It was to them a sad affair;
but afterward the mourners went
to accept the dead boy and forget.
In a few years' time nobody cared.
I suppose that that's the fact of death.