With My Father, like Scent with a Flower—IV

My father catches a beetle exploring the extravagance of a lamp on the side table. He says all living things have a tendency for death. All living things desire to be references to nonexistence. I disagree like a week of sunshine does with rainfall in August. I say the end of all living things is the beginning of living. What dies transfers itself into every nerve which once knew it, aiming for survival. My father takes my poem and reads it aloud, and I hear something broken in his voice. I ask how he knows without knowing Death. He says: well, your mother is a memory now, is she not?