DEATH INTO LIFE

Now comes my aged hour of dismal gloom,
the beauty of my luminous young years
a solemn mist inside a timeworn tomb,
filled not with prisms of delight, but tears
which spill into a fountain dark and cold.
Romantic notions ever present in
my youth speak not a whisper to console,
nor hopeful word to lead me from my den
of dreaded doom. I can't avoid my fate.
My breath subsides; death's shadow shelters me.
And so I pray before it is too late:
Dear God above, from sin please set me free,
and as I cross the Great Divide, my soul,
diaphanous, receive into Your fold.

Copyright © 1994 Ruth Gillis

Published in Poetic Eloquence Summer 1994
and in RB's Poets' Viewpoint November 1994