Your life has shriveled to its close.


All that remains are the protruding bones


of memory, bleached coffin-white


by suns of time.


You died as you had lived, in pain,


calling out your mother’s name


until God weakened, and sent her


to reclaim what was once hers,


now hers again.


Rest alone, and in that singular peace


which you purchased with your prayers,


rest bless’d, the sole beneficiary


of your own benedictions.


Death came not too early, but too late.


You could already hear


the shuffling of impatient mourners,


the scraping of the shovel


unearthing a narrow grave.


You knew exactly what we were doing.


You knew, yet you chose to die,


without remonstrance, quietly


to oblige us, and your waiting God.








[Unpublished.]