Find Me (For Fay Slimm 25/07/98) Poem by Steve Slimm

I caught you at something yesterday -
Did you catch yourself?
I say this because I love you –
Because I can’t bear to see you stoop.


You don't yet feel that Love conquers Death -
But I both feel and know it;
And yearn for you –
My dearest and only mother –
To know it too.


Of later I sense your pact with death grow stronger.
Fine - if that’s what you really choose.




But don't I know you from somewhere else?
Weren’t we there together
In the land of illusion -
Where death was that ancient enemy
Vanquished at our feet?


You thought perhaps I had left that place?
(When I withdrew of dire necessity
From the company of my peers)
And hand-in-hand with my father
You left that land to find me?


Not so my dearest and oldest friend -
You will not come across me in that ‘real’ world of yours;
For I remain an illusionist still.


And were you, through the depths of confusion,
To re-enter that land and search for me there;
You would find me living in seclusion -
Somewhere near the centre -
(Outcast from a society that also believes I’m gone)
- And longing for pleasant company.



I fooled you all when I walked away;
But in the land of illusion nothing is what it seems;
And Death, the greatest illusionist of all,
(Who in your world of ‘reality’ you reluctantly serve till the end) ,
Is seen for what he truly is -
A two-faced confidence trickster!



This morning I share with you the sunrise;
And think of you peeking tiptoed
Through your Velox bathroom window
To catch the thrill of a new day.
You see the possibility of it being your last -
And grab it all the more greedily to your breast -
Believing this to be the only way to fullness.


But I too have a lust for the New Day;
And choose to feel it rather as my very first -
For thus is the nature of Eternity:

When thoughts of ‘last days’ are over -
New Beginnings are all that remain.



Which brings me full circle to my point of entry -
The ‘something’ I caught you at yesterday:

Did you not feel the weight of your finger
When it pointed at your only son -
Who one day might (or might not) choose to be
With a woman not his wife - and share himself?

Is not the weight of this finger
(Along with that of the other three
Inescapably turned toward your own desire)
Enough to hold you fetered in the Day of Judgment?


When you are gone I will do as I choose.
But give us both freedom of choice now -
And release yourself from the grip of Death:

How can you reap freedom while serving sentence?



‘Love is stronger than death’;
Thus it is written and thus it is.

While love remains an illusion
The reality of Death looms closer.

When Love becomes Reality
the illusion of death disappears.