The sky is a broken plate, pale and cruel
and lightning scratches oblivion’s face.

Each step in this funeral procession
is a shadow leading to a heart of silence.

Old people watch like portraits in a vacuum
a future they never thought would arrive.

Butterflies of a forgotten summer:
faces changed to masks staring

with helpless grief at an irrevocable world,
a distant chance now truer than truth.

Published in Rochford Street Review