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This cold weather carries so many old people away.

That’s the first line of a poem called “For Nineteenth-Century Burials” by John Betjeman. But it can just easily apply to the centuries I’ve lived in. The line pops into my head now and then, and did so the other day as I passed by the new/old campaign office of Michael Bloomberg, which popped up one day a couple of weeks ago and almost immediately shut down the day after Super Tuesday. This is all that is left:

Michael Bloomberg Chicago HQ, the day after.

One day, the same will happen to the Bernie Sanders office, then the Joe Biden one, and so on and so on. In these days of coronavirus, and the usual violence and accidents of various stripes, it is hard not to think of death, here today gone tomorrow, as opposed to the more optimistic, but still earth-bound Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! referred to a few posts ago.

Examining letters from my grandpa’s brother, writing jovially about seeing slightly old movies in the Pacific Theater, out of harm’s way, until he wasn’t and was killed late in WWII gives me a similar feeling.

If one thinks about it, death surrounds us daily, there is always something, animate or inanimate, meeting its maker as we walk down the street. And if we felt it, as one can if they focus on certain Instagram pages about, say, farm animals, many of us would not be able to carry on. Anyone who helps animals in trouble feels this deeply sometimes. I rescue birds when they migrate through our hazard-filled big city, and the speed and wantonness of death can be astonishing.

A beautiful Fox Sparrow beyond rescue.

Look at this beautiful Great-horned Owl:

©2019, Nora Moore Lloyd (nativepics.org)

Sadly, it didn’t live even for a day after this photo was taken due to an injury it had already sustained. Such beauty and vibrancy, gone.

I guess the clichés about carpe diem carry weight. It seems right to do what you love and spend your time with those you love. Realize that everyone is in the same boat, every living thing on this planet.

These cold breezes / Carry the bells away on the air, / Catching new grave flowers into their hair,  / Beating the chapel of red-coloured glass.