Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 517

Send Off

Intro by Ted Kooser
02.15.2015

The Dalai Lla­ma has said that dying is just get­ting a new set of clothes. Here’s an inter­est­ing take on what it may be like for the new­ly depart­ed, cast­ing off their bur­dens and mov­ing with enthu­si­asm into the next world. Kath­leen Aguero lives in Massachusetts.

Send Off

The dead are having a party without us.
They’ve left our worries behind.
What a bore we’ve become
with our resentment and sorrow,
like former lovers united
for once by our common complaints.
Meanwhile the dead, shedding pilled sweaters,
annoying habits, have become
glamorous Western celebrities
gone off to learn meditation.

We trudge home through snow
to a burst pipe,
broken furnace, looking
up at the sky where we imagine
they journey to wish them bon voyage,
waving till the jet on which they travel
first class is out of sight—
only the code of its vapor trail left behind.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Kathleen Aguero from her most recent book of poems, After That, (Tiger Bark Press, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Kathleen Aguero and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 518
Column 516