Maybe
Maybe, I'll weep before I die
Lying by you, my love, and cry
Feeling your heart beat close to mine
Probing your eyes for the last time.
Maybe, your tongue will taste my tears
While your sweet words will soothe my ears
And with my face I'll touch your hair
Its fragrance shielding off despair.
Maybe, I'll run my fingers close
Along your lips, your brow, your nose
As to remember beyond death
Their subtle lines and how they met
And while we're holding us so near
Then Death, the Still One, may appear
The breath from my kiss He takes away
And bids me come without delay
I feel Him stealing your embrace
Your very face becomes His face
My mind, my soul, He turns to Him
My heart grows faint, my eyesight dim
Already I am facing black
And when I struggle to look back
Maybe, I'll catch a fleeting glimpse
Of you holding still my lifeless limbs ...
I wrote this poem in the summer of 1995 by a sudden inspiration. The first verses created the next ones, as it seemed, and the whole poem took no more than half an hour to fully bud out. It truly made me wonder.
When, in 1998, I started my first web site at Angelfire – which, by the way, happened to be an anagram of my surname for people with a lisp – I published this poem as one of the first to go online. Over the years, quite a lot of people copied it for use on memorial web sites of loved ones, especially when they'd died young.
In May 2009, I was surprised at receiving an email from the New Zealand Film & Television School, who asked permission to use my poem in a graduation film of one of their students, which, of course, I granted. Afterwards, they sent me a CD-ROM with a copy of the film, which mentioned the poem's title and my name in the credits. Funny.
