Tuesday Sonnet: Immortality

“When I am gone, I shall not be the dust
That licks your soles beneath your steps wind-borne,
Nor yet the thread of ash that, shorn of lust
And reason, trails the mantle of the storm;
I will be in the voices of the people
And in their hands and pens, and in the speech
That rains – in verbal tears – from stone and steeple,
Portending of an age beyond our reach.”
Thus sings the everyman, but in his quest
To grasp the days that gleam after his blood
He learns from disciplines and wear of zest
The truth which men before him understood.
Who does not learn this, dies, and those who do,
Find more to life – hopes more important, too.