These Days Are Among My Worst

These days among my worst
But endure them I must
For I have a job to do
I go to work, putting aside my disgust

Like most, I have my craft
This unique act is all my own
For no others do what I do
Though I never work alone

Each day, a new list of tasks
To complete one by one
Like you, I spend each day
Working until they’re done

In places all over the world
I have meetings, as most do
While you may work in groups
Each of my dates is set, a reservation for just two

For I am the Darkness
That brings your final light
I am the agent who visits you
The day of your permanent night

My work may seem unjust
Days filled with grief and fear
But my work must be done
And peace follows wherever I appear

Many fear my required role
Their loved ones often rage
I accept that it must be done
I ask you try for calm acceptance
No matter the cause or age

You may ask me what makes these days
Harder than the rest?
Aren’t there many others that would be easier to detest?

Take the child,
innocent and pure,
senselessly sickened with a cancer
Or victims of an accident,
taken in an instant
their numbered called far too soon

For even those fates most tragic, I can tell you my answer.

To the child, I bring an end
Not just to life, but a prolonged agony
To their families I bring a date
To start healing the broken family

And to those that perish so suddenly
By accident or disaster
I offer that they rarely suffer
Their demise quick, no time to fear
a meeting with their master

Your plague populates the graveyard
The tasks of mine rarely this hard
The many soon to be killed
I mourn for them
watching countless caskets being filled

It’s not only that these deaths are cruel, long, and painful
Watching every victim, every labored breath, far, far from graceful
Until their lungs fill and fail, their time up,
continuing living, they are unable

It’s not that they must face me, left without their kin, scared and alone
Tucked away in waiting rooms, hallways and elsewhere, facilities overflown

It’s that so many of their ends needed not be this way
The folly of man responsible for the early arrival of their last day

While plagues often ravage this world, leaving a trail of despair
It’s not always that so many are lost as needlessly as this nightmare

I know my task will always be the Bringer of the Dark
Nothing can change that, no person’s end ever waived
But even I am overcome with a sadness much too stark
When there are so many that could have been saved

While little of my work in the moments is understood
I am forced to make my rounds,
these ones most solemn and most cursed
But I weep for you not saving those that you could
I struggle through each hour, these days among my worst.

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