04-04-2019, 04:59 AM
They wrapped his body with a pale linen shroud.
He was carried on a wooden stretcher across the field
to a pit dug open at the break of dawn. He was lowered
gently for the first four feet, but dropped when one
of the pallbearers slipped. The dirt was less demanding.
No one cared when the mound was tamped down
by the groundskeeper that afternoon,
nor when the worms began their hungry work
tunneling from the open through the earth
and the pale linen shroud and his skin.
His body bloated like from an excess of meat.
The whites of his eyes turned blue then black.
The pores of his skin widened into wounds,
only the blood that oozed out was green.
His nails, now purple, popped out of his digits.
What mercy it is, that when we die,
our bodies do not float high into heaven
like our souls -- that the sun is not fuelled
by spilled yellow bile, that the rainbow is mere light,
and that snow is feathers, not falling worms.
He was carried on a wooden stretcher across the field
to a pit dug open at the break of dawn. He was lowered
gently for the first four feet, but dropped when one
of the pallbearers slipped. The dirt was less demanding.
No one cared when the mound was tamped down
by the groundskeeper that afternoon,
nor when the worms began their hungry work
tunneling from the open through the earth
and the pale linen shroud and his skin.
His body bloated like from an excess of meat.
The whites of his eyes turned blue then black.
The pores of his skin widened into wounds,
only the blood that oozed out was green.
His nails, now purple, popped out of his digits.
What mercy it is, that when we die,
our bodies do not float high into heaven
like our souls -- that the sun is not fuelled
by spilled yellow bile, that the rainbow is mere light,
and that snow is feathers, not falling worms.