Famous Words Last

I was trying to write a New Year's poem. Stuart Ross always writes and sends out a marvellous one. Here's this year's. This is the first occasion that I've had to try to write one, though I'm supposed to be working on a new children's story for chickaDEE magazine about the Olympics. (Did you know that the Olympic torch is going to be carried up Mt. Everest? I guess to mark human achievement, but also China's claim on Tibet. Still pretty cool. Also the main stadium is going to look like an abstract robotic bird's nest. The water sports will take place in a building that looks like a block of water. Amazing.)

I could only come up with glib, cheesy poems. Like:

NEW YEARS


bread.


stale bread.


croutons.




Then I got to thinking about looking back, and ultimately, to last words on gravestones. (My last post was about my grandfather's home town in the old country. We are planning a trip through Eastern Europe to visit the sites of our families' heritage. There are some graves that have never been visited by family. I rarely have visited gravesites, except for this past summer when we were in Westminster Abbey and saw the many grave stones and markers for a many famous aristocrats, artists, musicians, and other sundry famous people. We also saw Yeats' grave in Sligo on which is written is famous epitaph. I wondered about what I might have as mine, keeping in mind who might read it -- my children and family.

Here is what I was thinking, one of these two variations:

Finally, loss teaches that all is not loss.

*

What do we gain by loss? That all is not loss.

*

I'm truly not anticipating needing either of these any time soon, however it's better than croutons. Or what my mom always suggested for my hypochondriac Grandfather. "See, I told you so!"