Almost everything lasts forever
(not the tombstone, its letters), but
graves, mere narrow sinks in level
ground: places where the bones lie
beneath or memory of the person,
the soul unenveloped and free
in the universe alone. What's light
dims, but never extinguishes.
Cold air falls from the ceiling register
to the floor, heats and rises,
mixing the air, unseen but felt
against the body,
mine, that here breathes.
Lives come and go; words
inhabit the page perpetually.
The words last until the last
reality, what you may have read
of them from books, what you may
heard of them whispered in your ear.
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