Afterlife Filaments of shadow Linger on my tongue Creating an elaborate taste of solitude Enshrouding my soul Life visible and veiled Obscure Solemn Archaic Reduced to a prefabricated nothing A finespun delicate demise My face and wrappings gray and colorless More like a light pencil sketch than human form An austere vague portraiture Etched intricately against the wall The anguish of Saints dwells in funeral urns Shades of vestigial emotions Perform a sacrament for each separate sorrow Small and dark and quiet Dissolving with a play of light Tracing across lacy wrought iron balustrades Dining on fragments of prose I listen for a final moment My sensibilities marked by a vast crying emptiness With only a drift of thin clouds to mute the room My spirit becomes one breath With the ashes of poets

Copyright 2001 - M.D. Burke