I took a break from poetry Wednesday last week to publish something important, but I’m back this week!

I like writing poems about death okay. This one is called ‘Breathe’.

Breathe

Fresh archaeological soil,

Carved stone relief,

These things we hide behind –

The green grass overturned

To the earth he’s returned.

 

This him, an inanimate thing,

That will forever be more than:

Is sometimes a nightmare,

A monstrous ghost imagined,

A child of heaven imagined.

 

We approach it with fear,

With music and eulogy like shields,

Black armour, stinging eyes.

He is more immaterial

Than his corporeal material.

 

His home within the valley,

Shadowed beyond darkness,

Always there, like gravity,

Like the very air we breathe

And then don’t breathe.