Larry Ollivier

—John Donne

How easily the words roll off
our tongues: death, dying. So long

as we’re not the one who’s dying
death is purely hypothetical.

But then you find a lump
in the breast, x-rays betray a growth

in the throat. And out of nowhere
Death comes thundering astride

his storm-black stallion, flag
of his black country snapping

from his lance, the four horsemen
pounding in his wake. The sun

comes under siege. Constrained
by iron bands of cloud, the morning

light grows dim. The customary
singers, finch and sparrow, fall

still outside your window,
turkey vultures cast their shadows

like a net across your lot.
The eye finds darkness everywhere.

And the tongue, so strident
ordinarily, declines to name

Death’s depredations on the country
of your life, retreats

in silence to the coldest
corner of his arctic cave.