The Reaper in Lilac
a Saturday morning poem.
I can feel her behind me
lurking like a lilac bush before a bloom
near enough to the sweetness
but still frosted in winter.
She is not dangerous but remains omnipresent
longing and level in her patience
within the woody branches that once held our weight,
anticipating our return to the nest
—that we came from
and the next
of the hereafter.
She is not welcome, not now—
but I can feel her all the same
in the liminal spaces of sweeter dreams,
in memories misted over the nightmare we claw and scrape to live through
...till the end.