Himself

By Thomas P. Lynch b. 1948

He’ll have been the last of his kind here then.

The flagstones, dry-stone walls, the slumping thatch,

out-offices and cow cabins, the patch

of haggard he sowed spuds and onions in—

all of it a century out of fashion—

all giving way to the quiet rising damp

of hush and vacancy once he is gone.

Those long contemplations at the fire, cats

curling at the door, the dog’s lame waltzing,

the kettle, the candle and the lamp—

all still, all quenched, all darkened—

the votives and rosaries and novenas,

the pope and Kennedy and Sacred Heart,

the bucket, the basket, the latch and lock,

the tractor that took him into town and back

for the pension cheque and messages and pub,

the chair, the bedstead and the chamber pot,

everything will amount to nothing much.

Everything will slowly disappear.

And some grandniece, a sister’s daughter’s daughter,

one blue August in ten or fifteen years

will marry well and will inherit it:

the cottage ruins, the brown abandoned land.

They’ll come to see it in a hired car.

The kindly Liverpudlian she’s wed,

in concert with a local auctioneer,

will post a sign to offer Site for Sale.

The acres that he labored in will merge

with a neighbor’s growing pasturage

and all the decades of him will begin to blur,

easing, as the far fields of his holding did,

up the hill, over the cliff, into the sea.

NOTES: Poetry Out Loud participants: a typo has been corrected in the third-to-last line: “being to blur” should read “begin to blur”. This typo was corrected on February 1, 2013.

Source: Walking Papers: 1999-2009 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2010)

Biography

Essayist, poet, and funeral director Thomas Lynch has written four critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, three award-winning volumes of essays, and a book of short fiction. By using his own daily routine as poetic fodder, Lynch has transformed the mundane task of preparing the dead into a life-affirming event. His lyrical, elegaic poems describe the dead citizens of Milford, Michigan, his own family relationships, and scenes . . .

Continue reading this biography