When I Heard Death.... Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I heard death for the first time
In a human voice when I was very young
And my blonde aunt argued with her husband
On the other side of the screen door,
Upon the small green yard with color changing
Lizards and mother’s rock garden ringed with stones—

Between the palms and the humid sky,
The last shades of vermillion before the
Sun was shut behind the door,
Her voice died in certain way like a
Sea butchered by a silver knife
And bled dry, wind and
Waves departed
And she laid flat on a marble slab
On the other side of cold inoculated doors
That was how it sounded
When I heard death for the first time
In a human voice.