The Gentleman

Anonymous One,
One black question perched next to my window:
Once the body dies, does consciousness too?
It cawed persistently, fluttered, wouldn’t leave.
My intimacy with death somehow grew;
I intimated death was staying nearby,
Death somehow aware that I knew.
Perhaps it was the tall gentleman who
Gave me a knowing smile the other day
While checking in at the motel around
The corner; so I quietly prepared
A sumptuous dinner, thinking he’d be found
In my dining room chair when the time came.
And it happened that way. We talked and talked.
I found the gentleman’s face
Sometimes looked hideous, sometimes terrible,
Sometimes pleasant, sometimes neutral as space.
It was all simple, obvious: he fed
On my imaginings, concepts, thought;
His very existence, it may be said,
Was but the play, the dance of consciousness.
When I thought consciousness may cease
With bodily death, a lightning forked through:
Its end would mean the end of the gentleman too.

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