Time to Go Context: The poem is dedicated to Beverley Fuchs, a dear friend who was also a member of a poetry group I belong to . She had recently written a charmingly optimistic poem about putting on earrings before going to meet her chemo therapist, so I knew that her health problem was a serious one and when she did not show up for our next meeting, I called her. She told me then that she was going into hospice and this would be the last time we could communicate. She added, าBut if you write another poem, would you email it to me? You know that both my husband Vic and I enjoy your poems. We hung up and I thought for a while about what kind of a poem I could send her. I also thought I want to go with her as far as I can. And then I wrote this poem:
TIME TO GO
Dedicated to the Memory of Beverly Fuchs,
a longtime member of the Palo Alto Thursday Poets Class
Come away, Love; we've had it here.
What better time to leave than Winter when the nights are long?
Now while Orion strides the sky, the Dog Star at his heels,
we'll quit this tilted Earth that loops around the same sun every year
and hunt for different fields of stars.
And why should we regret the loss of Spring?
Regret fades fast in vagrant minds like ours.
We'll flash by Saturn first and spin away
in spirals past Magellan's clouds,
aiming whatever we've become toward some dark mass
backlit by the secret suns its dust obscures.
Black holes be damned! And if one sucks us in,
think of the ride we'll have.
Here is my hand. See how the flesh has fallen away
and veins show like the skeletons of leafless trees?
It still holds warmth. Take it and be fearless
while we run the risks of Time.
We shall be stripped of everything, of course,
pared down to our essential selves;
but on we'll go beyond imaginable Beyond until
we reach the last horizon of events.
There we will rest together,
timeless and complete.
Jane J. Robinson 12/15/2008
