Still Life Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

My vision enters a darkness of surgical light
where the dying lie waiting all around

for a sign, a token of passage
on the narrow barges of hospital beds

for cleansing ceremonies, mnemosyne chants
on an outgoing tide

eyes focused on the slow passing
of this visitor, this live stranger

with unanswerable questions of intimacy
who, at last, breathless, gets to you too late

his only sacrament left this curious vision
of your figure on an unceremonious slab

of a forest floor in mushroom-soft light
where foxfire and darkness compete

while surgically ritualistic insects frantically pour
through an emptying body’s brief rich store