He would eat well,
get plenty of good sleep,
attend the doctor,
at least annually.
He went for tests,
those colonoscopies,
the PSA and then the digital,
echocardiograms,
cholesterol and lipid tests,
urinalysis and Radiographs..

Then, on a gloomy day,
he felt a bit off colour.
Doc said it was the Flu,
or maybe just a virus,
dragged in from China
or some such place,
where people were so primitive,
and still believed in
what we know as witchcraft.

He took the pills, green ones,
500 milligrams four times a day,
before his meals, with water.

He felt worse when the sun returned,
a bit of nausea, vomiting,
later at night some diarrhea
and sweats that soaked the sheets.

He knew he had to wait,
the weekends were so inconvenient,
'til Monday, then, his doc had said
and that was water down the river.

They cut a thin red line down to the groin,
retractors held the flaps away,
the scalpel cut through living flesh
when from the depth a bleeder shot
into the light above the body,
a bastard of a big 'arterial',
four frantic hands now searched,
a blade from Solingen, so supersharp,
it cut into the tissue and went on,
through arteries and veins and through
pulsating life of such a normal man,
who should not ever have been ill,
but was, now, by the grace of God.

Contents of the duodenum and bile
dark blood and foamy brightness
of the fountain of his soul
all mixed into a mess of devil's colours
washed by the constant stream
still from the bleeder, only slowly now.
Not even arrogance could save him now,
he had been called to God, it was his time.

Herbert Nehrlich

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/it-was-his-time/