My Death
       

The pigeons fly up past windowpanes
to the rooftops, then beyond

the rooftops. Pigeons fly up, not doves.
The dirge of traffic grinds to a stop.

Someone tries to rub a cinder from an eye,
and so much sunlight streaks

the brownstones a comforting rust.
This is it, the perpetuity of it all,

as I look up at the sheer face
of these cliffs, suddenly bright with patches

of moss and wild with the shaggy white
petals of wood asters.

What I have become is this
emptiness that rests within the cusp

of an open semicircle
embraced by fronds of maidenhair.

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Copyright © 2012 Wally Swist All rights reserved
from Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love
Southern Illinois University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission