Death

Death,
Creeping ivy spreading across crumbling stone walls
over faint engraved script, beneath blackbirds picking
in the chill of landscape, the bell ringing snowdrops,
in the cracks of flagstones under an organ’s breathless lament,
across where footsteps hollow the hallowed earth,
past an angel weeping untimely time-worn tears of stone.

Across the frosted yew, where mist competes with a soul’s ascend,
shrouded clouds above the clock tower, across a gusty wind
and a leeward‘s sweet hymn with a snowflake whirl
for a silence, for a prayer, for the shadow of a cross in stained glass,
for the moss that cushions the tombstones from lapidary pain,
the traces of past lives held in granite, marble and limestone,
outworn, forlorn, in the breath of winter, in the hug of snow.