2 posts / 0 new
Last post
Ars Moriendi

by trishhopkinsonpoet

“A SIMPLE Child, / That lightly draws its breath, / And feels its life in every limb, / What should it know of death?” ―William Wordsworth
 
Called back, she slipped quiet
into the longest length of sleep –
quiet enough to hear the buzz
of an insect’s paper wings.
 
Stoic stillness, a marble statue –
soul and matter merged,
unlike neglected memorials –
initialed stone preserved.
 
Slipped through fields, beyond
the barn – carried by six Irishmen –
in infant white with violets
and a blushed cypripedium.
 
None are forbidden by Death –
an ungrown spirit when alive,
promoted to Empress when past –
the dying eye saw an act of light.

--originally published in The Chaotic Review

94th Weekly Poetry Contest

Thank you for this!