Wilted Bones Poem by Erik Wilson

Old woman waits in sullen sinking silence
Evening wraps cruel arms about her emaciated body
Her hair wires about in a fearful frenzy
She stares with crushed confusion
at benevolent Blue Jays
Husbands look happily from high shelves in ironic frames
Hands shake; wobbling with anticipation and perilous panic
Her solitary, lonely tears-
sobbing for no one's ears
Welcome mats caked with forgotten cough-ridden dust of long-ago family visits
Stuttered failed syntax scrambling to make simple meaning
Glazed Blue eyes frantic with elderly, wild remorse
No angels sing for the salvation of an old soul
She stares with despair; refusing to meet the grim countenace of the Reaper
With degenerated finger bones he beckons her to memory's end.