The Late Arrival

Dark he was in the cock's crowing,
a shadow on the hillside by night,
where the fence runs its pickets
past copse and fen to the ground
where the headstones are strewn
and tracks of the undead prevail.

Dark and staggering when he came
on dawn's illumination, his shadow
limned by the sun's red tracings.
And in this too sudden brightness,
greensward sweeping the hillside
and all of his ravenous madness
ablaze with amaranth and thistle.

"Where has the night gone?" he cried,
eyes brimming like fissured rubies,
his cape mired as he clawed his way
toward the coffin, through the mud.
"Take the light away," he screamed,
as his chalky flesh began to steam.

Appeared in Infinitum