Death Vigil

In a huge extended gasp of
organ morbidity and diminishing
vital life signs, life-extending
medical apparatus breathing for him,
beating his poor failing heart,
flushing his destroyed kidneys
(bypassing the cancer in his prostate)
he lies there, comatose
unaware of his family's anguish.

Unconscious to the drama
playing out as his life forces
ebb further and yet again further
from medical rescue, confounding
the surgeon who just six days earlier
successfully performed open-heart surgery.
A good man, Cerberus will thwart his
crossing of the River Styx.

He will make that crossing, however
from the living to the dead. He hovers
at that turn of the road less travelled
which human will, the body's failure
and medical science permits us to avoid
but never, for any of us, forever.

His will robust, his organs failed,
medical science clasps its hands in helplessness
bemused and mystified at the transience
of life, surrendered compellingly to the
inevitable. That will be, will be.
Requiescat in pace, brave soul.