The Only One
I’m the only one left
of my family now.
They’re all gone,
disappeared, somehow.
Why I’m still here
is a mystery,
it makes no sense
from what I can see.
My mother went first,
too fragile for life,
having gone to sleep
she never awakened,
leaving me alone
to look for a wife.
My sister followed,
to our shock and dismay.
no one knows why
she was taken that way.
And finally my father,
addicted to tobacco,
he couldn’t say no,
as if he were simply
destined
to where he would go.
We told him to quit
but he knew best,
forever in a hurry
to find his rest.
I study their graves
when I visit in spring,
perhaps in that lettering
I might learn something.
Rob Mustard 