This is one of Dona's latest poems recently received. - poetheart 12/28/01
My body lies in state
Resting in its sad repose
Composed and still
No movement, cold and quiet
Like a statue, a monument
To once upon a time
When often love and laughter
Were handed out like gifts
To family and friends
Until they became tears and angry words
The coffin, a plain wooden box
No satin sheet, nothing so refined
Cold iron handles, not polished brass
Very soon will carry all the evidence
Away to the Mausoleum of Dreams
Wherein repose in silence and decay
A lifetime of memories in finality
The lid is now secured across this face
Of familiarity, of history survived
Every cruel hammer-blow of words
Drives home the nails to lock forever
To make secure now beyond redemption
Never to be resurrected
(In the way of mortal man's Hope
Of eternal rest from sin and death)
This is another kind of death…
The death of dreams…with no funeral
Immutable and ever-deceased
My love has departed
To lie forgotten in the past
From which I turn and walk away
by Dona Lou Pearson