The Elegist
       

When someone dies, he is asked.
Death is too easy a task.
Clichés are brought on display,
like uncorked vintage Chardonnay.

Tears drop into rivers that never
stop. He conjures poems so clever;
his lines echo past the sad ones.
Hadn't he loved like they had once?

A few words of comfort-well, anything.
The pretense is much too emptying.
Love is an urn waiting to overflow.
Death can't be an excuse to glow.

What's left to live, and to tell?
He remembers only too well.

Copyright © 2009 Raymond Luczak All rights reserved
from Mute
A Midsummer Night's Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission