Poem: The faces of death

 

The wheeling kites remind me of carrion crows,

impiously impaled on barbed wire

hanging in silent frieze

against the twilight;

Sudden blast of wind sets the guttering candle aflame

sputtering in the morbid motions of its death-dance,

the strange contortions of its finality;

Look, how the garden lies plundered-

Once silken petals ripped off their stems

lie in decrepit decay, edged with brown,

dried as old parchment and as brittle,

reminders of a forgotten fragrance;

 

The roses are dead, lost memories,

rotting where they fell. 

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from A Sad Piper 1994