Poem: "The Activist After Death"
This was the most popular of the $10 poems in the poll, with 6 votes. (I'm intrigued by how some polls have a tremendously clear winner, while others spread out or even tie votes. It might be interesting at some point to test this with a batch of poems: is your anticipated favorite your actual favorite after you've read them all?) This poem came out of the August 4, 2009 Poetry Fishbowl and was inspired by a prompt from minor_architect. Also worth noting is that it's a match for "Life Beyond Life" -- and could be considered a prequel for it, or an opposite.
The Activist After Death
You’ve spent your whole life
taking care of people and causes.
You’ve shepherded siblings and peers
past the potholes of adolescence.
You’ve survived parenting,
and heaved a feather-scattering sigh
over your empty nest.
Through it all, you’ve maintained
your contacts in activism,
penned a long line of protest letters,
attended rallies in the rain.
But then you die and reach the Other Side
and none of it, oh, nothing
compares to the sublime panic
the first time they hand you a planet you can’t hand back
when you get tired of it crying.
The Activist After Death
You’ve spent your whole life
taking care of people and causes.
You’ve shepherded siblings and peers
past the potholes of adolescence.
You’ve survived parenting,
and heaved a feather-scattering sigh
over your empty nest.
Through it all, you’ve maintained
your contacts in activism,
penned a long line of protest letters,
attended rallies in the rain.
But then you die and reach the Other Side
and none of it, oh, nothing
compares to the sublime panic
the first time they hand you a planet you can’t hand back
when you get tired of it crying.