WAITING FOR GOD

Already this year my wife and I have lost a number of elderly friends, all of whom had reached their nineties.
Many of us would question whether living to much an advanced age is something to be desired.

WAITING

A nurse approaches then retires
having adjusted tubes and wires
so I am left to lie in peace
and to progressively release
my buried improprieties
and misdemeanors, as I please:
errors, too late for correction,
guilts, those lapses of affection,
transgressions of the flesh and mind,
the failure, often, to be kind,
the opportunities I missed
when Fortune pleaded to be kissed.
Subdued and suitably contrite,
I gather them around me tight.
I do this with consummate skill.
I lie quite still.
A fly lands on the window-sill.