Survivor

This is you at various stages of your life.

Two months

Amidst the mudwaters
there is an infant in a Styrofoam box
red-faced with crying and want
naked against the primeval storm
the parents were long-gone
swallowed by the flood

Four Years

Racked with terrible fever
not eating, not drinking, wasting away
"What do I do for you, child?"
sorrowed ephemeral voices ask
and he asks God, eyes bright,
for a remedy.
And God delivers.

Nineteen Years

He wonders how he will die
of malaria, of mortar fire,
of a heart bled out by war.
He remembers a promise
to come home, even as he
traces the sixth rib 'neath which
the heart lies,
and is lucky enough to fulfill it.
They call you veteran now,
Mr. Man.

Twenty-eight Years

When three people and a dog die,
the word for it is
Massacre.
You were at the right place
at the right time,
laundering at the river banks,
that you missed
being a statistic.

Sixty Years

Doctors call it embolism
but you knew its name was death.
It swooped on your doorstep
and danced and knocked,
but never did it come in.

Ninety Years

You've met accident and plague and cancer and calamity,
looked at them in the eye and laughed and spat.
You're a survivor.

End.

Dedication: For all my long-lived friends. Thanks for telling me your stories. Don't you dare die on me now.