DEATH IN RAGS

See how Death is depicted as an old woman, 

dressed in rags, old beyond reckoning, 

from beyond the borderlands of time, 

always waiting in the wings 

like a carrion bird patrolling the land 

for those too young to know that their very lives 

depend upon camouflage or divine intervention. 

Pity the mother holding the child against the wind, 

not the east wind toward the birth of dawn, 

not the west wind to the end of the road, 

but to the north, where the chill winds,

unseasonable in late spring 

slither across the corners of the soul 

seeking prey among the fallen, 

especially those sleeping rough in the streets 

and those plagued by disease or the infirm. 

But sometimes she hunts for live prey, 

more like the eagle, not the vulture 

waiting to give us wings to those unwary souls 

who think she is a myth that time forgot.

5/7/24 Write On! with Nels Christiansen