The taste of death alters the soul:

once coolly cautious of its effects,

now we are struck hard by its bold proximity


Once filled with dread at its prospect,

now we are at once infected by,

and yet inoculated against its cruel pangs...

It has become part of our world.


In seeing and knowing we learn yet more to fear it,

but also by familiarity to bear it

as one more part of the perplexing picture

growing before our eyes.


Dust returns to dust,

rising from the devastation of our lives.

Yet while grief and rage would fell us,

Life bids us rise up and go on.


We falter forward, resisting the inner call to despair,

with hope in time and endurance

to soften the sharpest edges of pain.


Now in our souls we bear the mark

of ones who have been touched by death,

and we know in our very beings

that we will never be the same