Elegy on 16th Street

And have you had your day of reckoning?
    No man has ever seen a soul take wing,
    In spite of this, I feel you’re looking on.
I’d like to think the dead know everything.

     And did you care one whit once you were gone,
    that your accounts were badly overdrawn?   
    Or did you slumber through those aftershocks   
    in your distinguished plot beneath the lawn?   

    Perhaps your spirit’s soaring with the hawks,
    while we plod, earthbound, tied to ticking clocks.
    What might this mortal chess game really show,
    once pawns and king, alike, are in the box?
      
I hope the Ever After will bestow
Big Answers––in a package with a bow.
Why are we here? and  Why must we let go?
Death either told you, or you’ll never know.          

What are you looking for?