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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Memorial Day

I am surrounded by roses.
It’s not time to leave these graves.
The latch on the door of life is open.
Being dead is being calm,
comfortable with beauty.
Being young in a different way.
Like touching the rafters
of a room,
feeling the awe of innocence
forever.
Keeping the mouth shut and the heart
open.

What is mortality?
Years weighing all the same.
To run and breathe then rest in peace
with jars full of fireflies.
To press flowers in the album
of our souls
and open it on a rainy afternoon
to let them fly away.
To not end.
To not despise a grave.
To read names on cemetery stones
and cry,
to know how wonderful it is
they lived.

They’ll come back.
We’ll return.
Being outside is where we are.
Being inside is where they are.
Where we’re going
we share together
the indestructible glory
of our lives.

Published inIndex of all Poems