Leave-Taking

I met a wasted body
Which still had spirit
Shining in the eyes
And welcome smiling
Through each toilsome breath.

A specter
Concluding his story
In hope and fear.
The epilogue
Would be mine
To write.

We filled sunlit hours with
Our geographies of time
And the caprice of events
That distort the hope
We all possess
Before the world begins.

We strove to plumb
The depths of life
Before the curfew came
And spoke with hesitance
Then with elegiac candor.

And in those special moments
Sadness became joy
As together we defeated
Both life and death
Through laughter
And reminiscence.

So, when nepenthe
Arrived
I did not attend
That rite
He did not hear
For we had set the seal
Upon our document.

This poem was published in The Pharos