resonant | For Poetry Month: John Engman, "Think of Me In D Major"

Think of Me in D Major

I know everything I know about dying
      (all doctors do
      is hope and cut)
from what I've been told by my own soft brain
while waiting in a waiting room:
                                    "Dying

seems to be something living organisms
      do naturally.
      You might be next."
I'm waiting for a doctor to check my pulse
and draw blood. I feel sick, not dying,
                                    but scared.

and poor Johann Sebastian Bach is trying
      to comfort me
      in D Major,
soothing with high strings, then coming in low
for a few notes, as if to say,
                                    gravely,

"Maybe you think about dying too much.
      Why, even you
      could live and be
swept away by a dose of baroque music."
The doctor who examines me agrees
                                    with Bach,

reducing all my intimations of mortality
      to medical facts,
      psychosomatic
muscle spasms and gas pains. I am alive,
but the prognosis isn't good: someday I will
                                    be dead,

and even the doctor admits that he can't find
      one cell
      of my soul
with his silver instruments and microscopes.
It's hard to believe that anyone can live
                                    hopefully

if the body is simply a score written in red
      and white counts,
      brainwaves, x-rays.
But harder to believe that anyone can die
when Johann Sebastian Bach argues
                                    for the soul

in D Major, a symphony of goosebumps.
      Maybe what dying
      organisms call
living is learning how to be swept away?
I admit that I feel swept away, somewhat
                                    immortal,

with Johann Sebastian Bach in the air.
      So, if someday
      I disappear,
just think of me as a goosebump, or a note
that disappears in D Major, swept away,
                                    but still here.

John Engman