CALCULUS OF DEATH
Hardly anyone dies anymore,
we simply pass away.
Death is so old fashioned, so biblical,
so final, so analog, so one way.
Passing away seems more flexible,
floating like dust in a sunbeam or
a balloon’s string slowly
slipping from a child’s hand;
tranquil and transitional like a Degas.
Death is a loud ugly head-on collision —
blood, hair and bones etched by broken glass
frozen in time capturing the intensity
and immediacy of the end.