I held her dying hand in the soft morning light
I studied the shrinking life in her eyes.  
The woman I loved would not last out the night
Her groaning breath now fierce sighs.

The weakening flame in the quiet breeze
Matches her dying
Her beautiful face like a fallen goddess in a marble frieze,
Riven with crying.

Her beauty had aged, not gone,
Her white hair falling down like thin ribbons of snow;
Her eyes that once shone
Filled now with a frosty glow.

Soul and body fade away
The mind is a strip of celluloid,
With diminishing returns. Nothing will stay,
But pass infinitely into a void.  

In the end, all that lingers is love
Like a stable beacon through time,
No matter how complete, never enough,
In life, verse, prose and rhyme.