Small Craft Warning - Heavy Seas

I'll warn any readers of this blog that what follows is a bit heavy - it's a poem I wrote last night about my experience of Nathan's funeral.

If that's not something you're feeling right now, come back later. Otherwise, I hope you find it meaningful.

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Contents of Mourners' Pockets

Ring the bell
For across the bridges of this Unreal City flow the multitudes
And in their pockets they carry the remains of the dead

Son of the city
The mothers bring his heart, swollen and pulsing
Love, pain, truth, ruin

The fathers bring his eyes, luminous beneath streetlights
Where hard men walk, not swaggering,
Listing under the sallow glow of obligation

Brother of the city
The sisters carry his books, heavy and uncountable
Dragging dry pages that will not be read again
To the inferno that blackens the paper to match the ink

The brothers carry his music
It rings out over the roofs at dusk
The words woven into the chatter of one hundred tongues
The beat primal, insistent, thundering in the synchronic footfalls of the massing crowd

Here we will make a golem from these things we carry
With our ancient magic we will blow lion's breath
Into the mouth of this dead man, and he will walk among us
Until sleep drags us from this cold sweet night into the damp grey morning
Where we must arise with empty pockets
To tell the news of our great city
Now only ashes