Fetching

You now stand before
A heavy, black iron gate.
It creaks open
Under tremendous weight.
Pass by the ornate design
And trudge on through the snow
To a quiet land
Of misery and woe.

Enter a dank chamber
Of dark, eternal mourn'.
Shuffle across the hardened earth
And think of the forlorn.
Look at the names
And make up short stories.
Are they something nice,
Or are they something gory?

Step outside where
The dead brown leaves
Can circle ominously
At your numbing feet.
The icy wind
Whips through your hair
And sings a tearful requiem
To those who are not there.

In the distance
Rings a tolling bell,
Proclaiming to the anguished world
Its lonely sounding death knell.
You can hear the dead
Calling out to you,
"Come join us in our midnight vigil
And see what you can do."

Run your naked fingers
Across the chiseled gray stones.
The bitter, howling cold
Claws you to the bone.
Stare at the bouquets
Of dead sanguine roses.
All of these people
Have already been chosen.

Lust for a freshly dug grave
And death in the night.
Scream out in pain
At a moon that's too bright.
It reflects off the snow
As the stars in the sky.
The frozen light of the distant orb
Shimmers off the silver pools in your eyes.

Tread through lost graveyards
Like walking through a park,
Singing sad dirges
In the moon-lightened dark.
Decode the messages
From the dead
As they growl their whispers
Deep in your head.

You follow the path
On which you came in.
You get to the iron
And take one last look in.
The blowing snow
Rips you like a knife,
And yet you just stand there,
Lamenting loss of futile life.

'Til finally you're content,
And you close tight the gate.
You turn your back on this place,
Realizing your own dark, mortal fate.
You've left only a set
Of a single man's tracks
Being erased by the wailing wind,
But you know you'll be back.

---

Originally written:    January 22, 1999
Put online:    March 11, 2001
Discussion:    The title, "Fetching," is actually a play on words. A fetch is a ghost or a double, a fey, a wraith. It is believed by some that if it (their own double) is seen on Christmas Eve wandering a graveyard, they will die within the following year, though it is important to note that the subject of this poem is alive, and it is not necessarily Christmas Eve. Fetching is also commonly used to describe beauty or attractiveness. It is the beauty of death and the beauty that can be present within it that I tried to show in this poem. With the last stanza, the subject realizes his own mortality and feels his time and his very self being erased like his footprints in the snow. The inspiration for this work came after watching an excellent episode of "Millennium" in which Frank's father died. This poem was published in UWGB's "Sheepshead Revue" and was used in a project for my Death, Dying, and Loss class at UWGB.


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