Of A Death

Like I said in my last post, it is bleak:

Of A Death

I hardly knew you, yet a vision arises:

The boney fingers of your velvet death lie still,
clutch at the air beside the dank waters.
A muse mourns and wails on nearby
hillside for the love’s life lost.
The moss grows thick over closed eyes
that face towards the sky, clouds suspended,
unseen. It interweaves in tangles of auburn hair.
Lungs blackened, now just empty cavern cavities,
hold no breath, move neither up nor down.
Spine and pelvis, a crooked shovel, begin
to crumble, broken bits of humanity eroded.
Lips, blue and waxy are parted, doorway
into a life no longer there. The wild ivy vines
wrapping tendrils around emaciated legs
will soon cover the entire body,
drag it down into the humus
from which all things come,
and to which all things return.

As you lie, the clock plays its drum beat,
lumbering and laborious into eternity’s fire.
Pan plays his pipes, a wicked melody to the rhythm
as the dark ones smile on from behind
and inside the wisps of blue-gray smoke
that hang pendulous in the air and spread
like a caustic fog. You have smoked your last.

Good bye, and good night.