Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here—among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire—
"What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?"

Keywords/Tags: death, sentence, dead, cemetery, graveyard, mausoleum, corpses, manicured, lawn, flowers, pink, petals, blue, sky, red, sunset