Day Thirty: "Elegy"

Elegy

-for Rod Serling

In the future on a planet
far from home, there is

a likeness of you, gesturing
in your suit and black tie.

A slight glint of humor softens
your worn face and rough

voice as you hover in mid-step
through a door or around

a corner, cigarette in hand,
to introduce every story

and provide a small homily
at its end, a wry reminder

of human depravity and a call
to be better, to learn. You

try to teach me not to forget
the horrors of my history.

And sometimes you simply
haunt me: with strange faces

hovering outside a plane window
or above an operating table,

fears of memory and the uncanny
waiting in the past and future, within

varied apocalypses and the unmarked

ninth floor of a department store.

You have given me the uncanny,
the lonely made whole, the parables,

quests for youth both vain
and gentle, the acceptance of death.

And as you gesture onward endlessly
alongside the three astronauts

in this story, whose only wish
was to return to earth, I hope

you appreciate this last imagined
cameo in one of your own domains,

a fitting final resting place within
The Twilight Zone.