Death is very much a part of our daily lives. If we aren’t looking at photos in our homes and in newspapers of those we’ve known who’ve passed, we experience death moments of other kinds, especially in Nature. Sometimes these moments are juxtaposed with ordinary daily activities like going to the store or even playing a board game on the patio. Violent death often takes our breaths away as in watching the daily news from the war in Ukraine: the suddenness, randomness, and absurdity of it. Death, too, can occur right in our own backyards and houses.
My own basic awareness behind every poem is of context; these poems all occur in different contexts which resonate in different ways. “For whom the bell tolls” and all that is on the edge of these people’s consciousness.
The last ironic lines are a reminder that there are some things and feelings which are beyond our ken or our choices in how we respond to memorable events. But, in this case, I felt lucky to assemble the words to encapsulate all the above.