The tree in the garden
Does not mistake the season
It’s ready to shed its cloak of leaves.
Crinkled tones of amber, burnt sienna,
Dazzle in November sun
Next month it will be stripped bare
White bark stark in midwinter noon
The body in the coffin
Does not mistake the season
There is no gainsaying the timeliness of her death
The cold truth is visible at the altar rails,
where the remains lie in repose
The living come in single file to view her.
People murmur at her passing.
So sudden! I was talking to her just last week
And she was grand! And her poor husband!
In the graveyard the living gather in groups.
All around us are memorials to our transience
But we do not talk about that.
The kingdoms of the living
and the dead meet here,
But we only know the living.
Death is a present absence,
an incomprehensible fact, unavoidable,
known only by its deeds
This failing body does not mistake the season
It fights a dogged fight to hold back time.
It’s an intelligent organism, a survival machine,
Now returning to its elements, piece by piece.
Built-in obsolescence made manifest
But our inner light still blazes.
The incomprehensible dazzling
Display of all our talents and tyrannies.
And with love at the heart of it all
We rise up and burn brightly
Before death strips us bare
The dead do not mistake the season
They exist only in memory
in the land of the living,
Beyond time and space,
Back in the embrace of the eternal belonging
From which they were sprung
And where we will all find a home