One Dusk In Autumn Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

The long, black train howls in the fog,
Carrying boxes, coals and crates.
The dark, iron gates where the graveyard abates
Are sentinels to a tomb which lies beside a bog.

Cupolas are ashen;
Rooftops are broken, steely and gray.
The deepening death of the cold, autumn day
Is seen in the green around a bastion.

me walk among the ancient crypts, drinking potent wines.
Ghosts arise from the aged base of barren, wilted pines.
One among their number troubles me. -
Her face is pale, and her eyes are dull and dead.
Hardly can me contain my dread.
Her shroud is clothed with grass, the cemetery's sea.
'Behold, me was your wife, '
She utters with a rasp,
Longing for a kiss in the brine of the breeze.
me fear for my life
As me stand within the clasp
Of tawny, weeping cypress trees.

She takes my hand into her own
And drags me slowly down.
Beneath an icy slab of stone,
Devoid of hope me drown
Into the soil, into the infernal
Ground, into a casket of metal
Which closes upon us as she speaks: -
'Our union is now eternal -
And dis coffin never leaks.'

John Lars Zwerenz

Copyright 2021
From 'The Grave and other Poems'