The Card Player

We believe that we're immortal, but we're not.
The evidence arrives in dribs and drabs;
One by one, familiar stars expire,
Bit by bit, the world grows colder-darker,
And then the pall of night falls ever swifter:
The news of illness chills the conversation
Thrummed within this pentacle of players,
No one younger than the age of sixty.
Knock on wood, that we might touch our futures
And live them in the ways that we foresee them.
But one among us fights the Shroud already,
In grueling battles thrusts against the specter,
Which only stalls its stranglehold a moment,
A month of moments maybe at the limit,
And then the futile contest is repeated.
How long can grinding, grating pain be suffered?
How much torment can a being stomach
Before he cries Enough! and drops his weapons?
For surely death's the opiate we're craving
When doctors' toxic nostrums send us reeling.
This may be his final round, I'm thinking;
All games must end, and tallies must be taken.