Poems Frances Jane “Fanny” Crosby 1820 – 1915 "They're Gone" They're gone! those bright and blissful hours, When the soft wind laughed 'mid the greenwood bowers, And the wild bird carrolled its plaintive lay As faded the crimsom tints of day. And the dew drop came at the twilight's close To sleep on the heart of the mountain rose; They're gone, those joyous hours are passed, And a snowy garb o'er the earth is cast. Then oh! when the friends we love are fled To the cold, cold mansions of the dead, Like the fragile flower may we cease to bloom, And sleep with them in the peaceful tomb.
Matt Poindexter "The Child Who Follows the Child Who Dies" You didn’t ask to smuggle light across the tar-dark doorway of our family home, but here you are. Resolve what poem after poem could not: genetic damage, albatross of cells destroyed inside an autoclave, the nameless, shapeless ghost of medical waste. Baby, I’ll never tell you how you chased away the looters from the grave–the grave that was the empty crib you sleep in now. Instead, a myth: I found you in a field. The locals said the soil was toxic, dead except for weeds. But flowers bloomed, somehow. You waited there with patience, beneath a shield of yarrow, gold rays pulsing from your head.