LYRE

I’d like to find my key

and play my tune

before death comes

with its dark silence

 

I’d like to play it out

while I’m still young and full of terror,

with hills to sing to

and woods to walk

 

For when death comes

it comes I fear, sudden,

on a boulevard

of shrieking birds

 

People will gather and gawk

at my puzzled face,

at my crumpled shape

twisted into treble clef

 

I’ll watch them from a wooden bench

under a shade tree

at a bus stop across the street,

a final chord still sounding in my ear