Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Will And Testament Found In A Dead Man's Room

In life, a rhetorical enclosure;
in death, the walls remain
as delimiters, discretely
parsing the without
from within. If a forest
closed 'round in the years following
his departure, an owl's call
will splinter the pastoral
silence on any given night
and the world will shrink away.
A blink of whiskers. Then haste
to steal the last crumbs
from a sack of rice in the hutch,
the hunger that eats caution
and gnaws at suspense
in the same shining dark
that fell over his eyes
and into his possession
in his last hours, folded
into his estate so as not
to escape indebted.