Susan Daniels Poetry

for Duncan

If fate, or one of them, Moirai:
the one with the scissors,
has to cut this thread,
I hope she doesn’t laugh
while she does it, my manner of death
more interesting than the way
I choose to live:
Like the man in Athens
smothered to death
under too many gifts,
or the emperor who poisoned himself,
swallowing mercury to taste eternal life.
Maybe his spirit still wheels,
mad and confused in the ether
over China;
or the poet’s death of Li Po,
who tried to kiss the moon’s reflection
in water, and instead
fell from the boat
and drowned.

I’ll not behead enemies
and leave their teeth near enough
to bite my leg, leading to fatal fevers,
or shit my intestines out, poisoned,
as I walk across the forum.  No, those deaths
are for heroes and politicians, and I am neither.
With my appetite for joy
I am more likely to drown
in a barrel of wine
or surfing a wave of molasses,
dragged into the undertow
of a riptide of beer;
or perhaps reeled pulseless,
a victim
of a dancing plague.