Explication of "My Number" and "I had heard it's a fight"

The two poems, "My Number" by Billy Collins and "I had heard it's a fight" by Edwin Derby, are paired together in Sound and Sense because they both take a stance on death. In "My Number" Billy Collins personifies death, even capitalizing it's first letter, and explains it as an ominous and unpredictable terror. One never knows when death could be coming for them, it could be far away or right around the corner and we may never know: "Is Death miles away from this house" and he goes on to wonder if death may be at his front door. The speaker describes death's actions as if it is actually a killer who plots to kill certain people. Collins writes that death may not be after him at this moment because he is "too busy making arrangements" for others whose times have come.  In this poem the speaker believes that death is not only inevitable but also that it comes on its own terms and nothing we do to prolong it really matter, it decides to take a life whenever and wherever it chooses.

Edwin Derby expresses a different view of death in his poem "I had heard its a fight". He also expresses that death is inevitable but goes on more positively than Collins does in his poem. The poem starts dark saying that death touches you: "The afternoon it touched me / it sneaked up like it was a sweet thrill", this scare with death makes the speaker look differently upon life. He starts living better: "Cut out the liquor, went to the gym, and did / what a man naturally does". Derby looks at death as being inevitable yet it is possible to prolong it by living a healthy life. Instead of being scared of death the speaker in this poem decides to live life to the fullest without fear of death, which is a much more positive view than Collins presents about life and death in his poem.