Nostalgia....

In life's onward march As I sashay along In one abrupt tilt My paths cut across The old lang syne I live at crossroads Tossed across the yore Entwined between The extinct and extant Reflections roll by A retrospective sojourn In an enchanting slide Down a back street Which grasps me in a vision I once would not cast off Even as the present beckons And I move wittingly ahead I cannot but help look Wistfully, once at the past I've left far behind A milestone fondly reached Is now a memento A fore time reality In an inward flash Spins a clamant fantasy Nostalgia grips, A dream retires Into fairyland's folds And a story once told Remains a fairy tale forever.

The Last Caress

An unearthly hour of three it was The fiendish darkness sat sprawled  A glorious haven for macabre, crawled  Awaited another departure's ingress Into its gaping, gory, grisly stillness Street lamps dutifully glowed bright Waging a war with the fiend outright 'Twas nothing but a nocturnal torch Looking for ways to blackness forge Yet unmindful of the pallid repose Yellow light gleamed in the passageway Of a nursing home that had life underway Bloodless, frail Blythe pushed out a being Her very own form in flesh, wailing Into a world, where she lay on her way out The infant sucked on an ebbing breast As its mother sank into her swan song rest Cast one earnest look at her newborn's face As she rose up to the Holy Spirit's embrace A life petered out, as a new  one set about Blythe, the free spirit mingled with the Infinite Aileen, a new light, stayed to sublimate Her source extinguished, her nurture quashed A new life lay amidst  futurity's holocaust Whose wails pierced  through the hoarfrost At the hospice, splotches of blood were a persistent visitation And unusual tales were heard of a  phantasmagoric apparition On that wild, wintry night, in the ward, at the demoniac hour A shadow, a stray bone, an eerie moan and a wilted flower Arrived from nowhere, as a face peeped through frosty panes It was a  delirious, drafty night of  last Halloween Nurse Emily held a bawling Aileen in a gentle careen Whose angelic gaze shortly transfixed to the ceiling Her delicate mouth moving, as if she were feeding An aerial form seemed to possess the ward Lowering Aileen into her crib, Emily felt a shudder Albeit, the tiny life had slipped into a sweet slumber The virtuous nurse passed into Grim Reaper's chamber An inclement wind outside sounded a funereal moan As it blew across panes, fields and many a gravestone Death had just crossed borders with life.