Sickness is like an
irritating old friend:
you don’t want it
but inevitably
you listen to
its same tiring story.
Sickness comes at strange times,
at odd hours,
knocking at the door;
and you say, emphatically,
“It can’t be you again!”
And, like this old friend,
it doesn’t seem to matter
where you’ve been
or what you’ve achieved.
Sickness still visits you
and treats you
like nothing has changed.
In the visit of Sickness you are reminded
of life’s one great certainty:
that you have a body open
to the decay of the world,
vulnerable,
alone,
a material thing,
fleeting,
temporal,
mortal,
waiting for
another knock at the door.
16-5-2010