Death and the Miser, by Jon D. Lee

Death and the Miser, by Heironymus Bosch (Duchy of Brabant, Burgundian Netherlands) 1490-1516

Death and the Miser
          
Consider the banality of choice:
the crucifix’s slivered light against
a bag of gold     Death’s arrow nears to pierce
the heart     yet even as a demon leers
and holds the promise of a cinder’s heat
the miser’s hand moves of its own accord
to that which cannot follow him     And as
if memory the miser’s younger self
appears to stash another coin inside
a bulging sack he locks away     and does
not see the rat-faced beast that grips the sack
in appetite     that turns its head against
the miser’s fumbled rosary
                                                One can
not help but wonder at the artist’s mind:
the fevered brain that drives a man to see
the world as such a dream     the hours spent
entranced before a sheet of stainless white
the images that flittered in the eye
but died before they reached the page     And more
consider all the children screaming at
the artist’s feet     the open mouths that cried
for milk or bread while father bled his mind
to find the perfect line to smear
                                                       So much
depends upon so small a cost     And yet
the man who meets his leaving doesn’t see
the beasts that slither on the floor     nor does
he note the seraphim that spreads its hand
toward the lighted crucifix     Instead
he stares at Death itself     as if he’d wished
to somehow ward it off     as if its flesh-
less face was not expected     stares     in fact
as if he hadn’t seen that everything
including Death     is somehow owed a wage

Jon D. Lee

Jon D. Lee is the author of three books, including An Epidemic of Rumors: How Stories Shape Our Perceptions of Disease and These Around Us. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, Sugar House Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Writer's Chronicle, One, The Laurel Review, and The Inflectionist Review. He has an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University, and a PhD in Folklore. Lee teaches at Suffolk University.