Poem: Pompeii

In the end their lives resembled
the empty spaces in the ashes,
the last citizens of Pompeii.
Spaces when filled with plaster
reveal their final seconds of life,
pain forever focused in their faces,
mothers forever shielding children
and couples forever embracing,
frightened bodies reaching
for the thing they loved most
at the instant their very souls
were ripped from their moorings
in a blast of fire.

Desperation is not quiet,
and this is the most desperate thing –
to be alone again, confused and afraid,
covered with ash, children unshielded
from the final scorching heat,
and a middle aged couple embracing
in agony on the upper patio of a terraced garden,
where two thousand years later
a young dark haired woman –
a student, too young to know what they felt
but who would someday know precisely –
will meticulously reassemble from a pile
of colored tiles a mosaic image of their gods –
and see again the last thing they saw.