Memento Mori
by Sandy Crimmins

How do we mark the end of a life?
Quiet the simple words of doing and being.
Set loose the person who rode horses,
Smiled and soldiered, believed and bled.
In the movement of color and the color of movement.
But how can we understand lifeless hands.
With no hammer or chalk, sewing needle or spoon.
Draped with a rosary that swings toward an unseen magnet.
A compass point we can’t feel.
How do we choose a coffin?
What wood, which clothe, brass or base metals,
Will show what was or what we think was.
Now, that the story is ours to tell?
What do we put in a coffin?
A photograph, or a dozen?
Some symbol of eternal life?
The eternity of a life that ended like all,
No matter how many talismans were pasted to the soul.
How do we choose a coffin, darkening the face?
Losing the last of the soul showing in an unseen smile.
Sealing fate with our hands, tightening screws.
How do we bury a life that once was?
Cover it, smooth it, plant it over with grass?
Welcome a new day the air above lifting ever bluer?
How do we let the living put roots around a coffin, and grow?