Advice to Writers
1. Enter the story
Liked by colleagues
relied on by family
already at the outset
the protagonist is dead.
He is propped in a coffin
upstairs and to the right.
2. Paint a picture
The living revise planned futures
no less, simple, ordinary & terrible
than his had once been in
a life running straight from adventure
& the experiments of youth to a
decorous married middle age
3. Note the details
with a daughter, a son and one child dead.
A distinguished Public Prosecutor, his
work ambitions increasingly a refuge
as marriage proved difficult but yet demanded
a home and furnishings that safely resembled
those of his circle and the one he aspired to.
4. Make friends with it
So he and his family lived in comfort
in apparent good health and happy
enough if never fully satisfied.
Yet at the margins of satisfaction
unseen physical distress is growing
& eating away at happiness like a cancer.
5. Drop to a deeper level
The dreadful taste of death
grew while all about him
life went on as usual.
Feeling as if pushed into a sack
he despaired finally of choices
long since made or evaded.