My father’s favorite poem used to be
“They flee from me who once did me seek”
It was by Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey
Whose head was chopped off before he was thirty.
I’m remembering my dad as we begin “Peak Death Week”
There he is reciting lines in his Lazy Boy chair
An L.A. Times in one hand, a Lucky Strike in the other
With earnest bombast and a gambler’s small flair
Declaiming to his only audience, his wife and their little house
And to me here in a Covid future he could never imagine
I still hear the refrain, how the wheel of fortune turns and groans
On Monday you’re up, when the horse comes in, on Thursday you’re down
There are hot spots and statistics while the curve bends home
Suffering is general, but the peak is always your own.