So young and trite is the day

Born from this new light

Creatures of the dark and mist curl and wither

Only to return by midlight

The rose afar rises and stretches

Bloodshed velvet bleeds its regal glow

Smooth tips and enticing fragrance

Dark greens, stiff and sharp as spines

Beads of water glisten and shimmer

A blood’s true jewel

Thy shadows came in thy’s slithery way

Enveloping Devil’s Beauty

Charcoal webs and silver-black imprints

Spiral and intertwine, death and blood a dangerous omen

Thy Beauty’s velvet lips decay

A cancer slow moving and fast changing

Taking over thy body in one gulp

Last, final tips of red appear before swallow

Accenting and tracing its last magnificent life

Midlight turns to midnight

Bloodlines disappear

As the wind wails through the dead

A song, chilling, unnerving to us all

How austere and grim
it would seem
the stone-walls are saying:
'memento mori'
as one unobtrusively
walks by -and further
'  I don't need any company'-

  stones have hearts too
  if you could believe me-

time has made them weary
they have witnessed and heard
too many a human story
once tears they did shed
for frail and sad humanity
but their hearts have hardened
seared by man's inhumanity-

some villagers vowed
they had heard
at midlight's depth
voices from the hill
where the stone-walls stood
as though in muted sobbing
at hours so solemnly still--

I walk nearby
past midnight
but that path
I would not tread
not out of dread
but in silent respect
as I well know
the stones want
to be left alone
not to be engaged
or met.