Life is not so black and white
As we would love to believe

Death is not as instant as we'd like
Not tree by tree, but leaf by leaf

Not large enough to smother us out
But enough to bury us in grief

And the seeds of life struggle still
As they hang onto dead sheaves

Life can be one nearly invisible sprout poking out
from forgotten and rotten piles of logs

Life can be found struggling for itself
Blindly between cold and implacable stones

You may find it sitting in a church
Caught between strangers there

You see it flash across faces
That hide secrets of the skull and bones beneath

Life fills our streets
And death empties them

But it is so slow, this fading, this passing on
Instead of bearing us away, the waves just wear us down

And just before we catch a glimpse of ourselves
The reflective waters pull us down into darkness

Why is life so hard to enjoy
When it is no longer defined by the things it is not

Why do we pine away for death
As if it were some long lost love

Life is so full of rejections
But death judges not