Cadence

Requiescat in pace, Henning Garner Christensen 

 

Through glass you covet evening light,

oblique against the valley wall,

willing it to live forever

while you watch the days of film

slip away one by one before your eyes.

 

In the spruce outside the third-floor window,

a resident black squirrel endures the strutting local magpies,

knowing that come sundown, even cleverness

will not spare them the indignity of silence,

knowing that they soon must fly away.

 

As human as a cadence marching home,

you too must fly away,

those final notes defying gravity,

the treasured memory of your ephemeral life
etched into our hearts  

no more replacing its tangible, majestic beauty 

than the grooves on a wax cylinder

turning on a phonograph spindle in an empty room
replace an aria.