My Death

'Death is our eternal companion,' Don Juan said with a most serious air. 'It is always to our left, at an arm's length . . . It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you.' -Carlos Castaneda My death looks exactly like me. She lives to my left, at exactly an arm's length. She has my face, hair, hands; she ages as I grow older. Sometimes, at night, my death awakens me or else appears in dreams I did not write. Sometimes a sudden wind blows from nowhere, & I look left & see my death. Alive, I write with my right hand only. When I am dead, I shall write with my left. But later I will have to write through others. I may appear to future poets as their deaths.