Death, your totality is so striking
You walk in and make us gasp
as if you were a woman of sinewy bared legs

It is the scope of your vision
I remain in awe of;
give you but a breath, or its ceasing

and you bundle in your cradled arms
a life of moments forgotten, frayed by your good friends
time and age (you are all in league against us,

hording our memories, our loves,
rolling them over in your sleepless nature.
What use are they to you?

Would it kill you to leave a few behind,
a trail of rose petals, if you will?
Maybe that spring morning when the sun tip toed

over the river like a guilty child, afloat with love,
so the water sighed with pleasure, the kind usually reserved
for the willow trees in a dusktime thunderstorm)

Please, won't you leave that one?
Not just for me, but for my finite breathren
We'll pass it down with care

make it our universal adoration,
this resplendent soiree of light and water
It must move even your unmoveable heart, death

Enough even to make you smile, take a week off,
see how the world looks away from work
(and now that you've gone it seems we've forgotten

all about that small curve of river,
moved on in our lively reprieve,
wondering how to appreciate all this grace

now that we're free to revel in its permanence.
Secretly, we'll beg for you to come home,
restore your semblance of meaning to all this we've seen)