
Pyre to Guide the Dead
If you are to guide the dead
between constellations innumerable
crouch in the sand,
a black stone on the tongue.
What was left to tell?
Before death, the moment shimmers.
Fireflies alight.
Dreams are supplications
we hide between
carved from instinct.
The night,
an imagined stillness
quiet as a page,
offered safe passage
across an uncertain sea.
One sentence left on the page
appeared below language,
clings to the wind
tangled in smoke
as in mourning.
The living move through us,
A part of you follows
but let's forget that trouble
so we might forgive.
Addition by subtraction.
Horizon arrived.Â
The gates closed.
snippets from Maureen Alsop’s book ‘Pyre’