Two lonely graves
sit side by side a universe apart.
My grandparents are estranged in death
as they were in life.
My sister died piecemeal,
losing a little of herself
every day for twenty years,
her muscles knotting and her legs failing,
her vision blurring and her words slurring,
her brain regressing
until she drowned
in her own lungs.
My father is a box of cremains.
His exit was swifter if less lamented.
He rests on a shelf in the mortuary,
unclaimed after all these years.
My mother is fading to white.
Her hair is as white as her face,
her face as white as her pillow.
She shrinks a little more
each day and eventually
will dissolve into her sheets.
This cloistered road
is my favorite place in October.
Driving through this tunnel of trees
every day I savor
the fiery leaves contrasting
the gray sky.
I will savor them every day
before they fall,
leaving bare branches reaching up
like the hands of skeletons. -- Jeff Barnes
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