Sweet Poison Poem by Stan Petrovich

In a tireless mist
In a tireless fog
The crunchy yet springy heath
Hastens a wet death.
Some sweet poison had breathed
Into her lungs,
And she drank the foul runoff from the grave;
That culminates in a bloody cough
And, since she will brook no doctor's vile remedy,
The fat cattle watching
Her crumble and moan,
As she can barely walk or talk above a whisper
And heaves out a pitiable groan.
Death's rattle for Emily
Burnishes the waste,
Tarnishes the chaste,
And finally she is gone.

But what she embellishes
Stands in time embedded.
We can only wonder
What courage it took
To carve out the book
From disparate sources of cliff and mossy gleam.
She is now the ghost in the window
In the window it seems.