"Last
Rites"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
Sunday, April 3, 2005 6:56 a.m. pdt
We breathe, we believe, we bother, and we broker
We experience, with exhuberance, we wonder, and we wander
The human life is precious, and we rarely notice this
That God's Great Gift is just a fleeting brushing glancing kiss
Avowed to gaze into the
sky and wonder why
We look to Heaven, ask the questions, eradicate our doubts
But when the reaper visits was there something we forgot
And do we ponder feeling in the ground as bodies rot
For hundreds of years the
bodies disappear
Into the ground, with sacrament, adorned by elaborate memorials
Or else a simple cross, or star, or placard made of marble
And the living will visit, gaze at the stones, and marvel.
Astounding thoughts and
reveries, epiphanies and silence
Mortality comes knocking on the door at night unawares
History calls up through the new cut grass
And as we breathe, we realize that this life too, shall pass
Poetry
2005
