Death's Springtime Rendezvous

We continue our watch of the Passion Play which has been unfolding before our awestruck eyes since the approach of Easter Week. We watched an innocent child of God, a daughter of mother Mary, die an unnatural death decreed by the Culture of Death. We witnessed her cheated of God's time and God's will by the acolytes of the Evil One, to become a martyr for the imperfect. Now we watch the great Pope, the saintly John Paul II, approach the veil of death. We watch a natural death, a death walked in God's way. We pray for John Paul the Great as he winds his way to Heaven. We pray also for ourselves; that our own rendezvous with death will not be hastened by the law of the land.

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
~~Alan Seeger (1888–1916) [death, Pope, Schiavo, poetry]