In Margie's Elevator

We're having another surge in Covid (BA.5 variant, apparently), so Margie and I were masking in her elevator. I love the catch-lights in her eyes. As you see, we're both using mobility devices. My right knee is troubling again, and my beautiful walking stick is helping.

I had loaded this piece by Walt Whitman onto my phone and shared it with her:

From “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?


They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever it was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

Yes, Margie nodded, luckier. 

I said when we go, our work here is well and truly done. 

"Yes," she said, "it's good to think there will be a time when our work is done, even if our work is merely loving all there is to love. Still. After all these years, fatigue is a thing. It's a comfort to think there can be a time when it is finished."