Peter Roberts
how we think of death, & how death is
architectonic are our dreams of death,
whether of paradise or purgatory,
nightmarish or pastoral; we
make monumental our mortality.
but real death is small, private, &
(aside from squirms of worms & microflora)
silent. each life, each death is
fleeting – the body, a snowflake, soon gone.
or, when death comes for a multitude, each
body, a single snowflake in a blizzard,
is lost, undifferentiable, gone before
the snowdrift melts, the windrow rots.
Bio
Peter Roberts is a mathematically educated poet who sometimes writes fiction. He has been contributing to various magazines and journals, online & off, for more than 45 years. See his slightly dated personal page, www.god-and-country.info/personal.html, where you can find links to lists of all his published poems & stories, if you look carefully. Some may find the rest of the website interesting as well.