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Body Passing (A Poem)

Body Passing
    
for Imogen

“Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43)


Somewhere a clock is ticking, ticking, time
distilled to moments stretching down a
hallway, a corridor of memories. My eye dwells on

A gnarled magnolia trunk just beyond the
window, frayed and weather-marked, suggesting
hurricanes and nor’ easters, but which still stands.

Not so, her.

She is at her end, reclining toward eternity,
her body bearing the scars and wear of long life,
ninety-one years of sun and wind and rain, bent at

Times but not broken, not cut down even now
in spirit, her breath a rattle in a cage, voice a
whisper and, yet, she bears up with grace.

The tree will die and return to dust, the house
give way to entropy, overtaken by ivy, by weeds,
the salt air taking it down bit by bit, yet

Not so, her.

She will rise up on wings of eagles, run and not
grow weary, her memories deepened by grace,
her person intact, reformed, her body merely

Passing.

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