A_Perfect_Sonnet

This lyric is based on the book "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" by Mitch Albom.

Ben Stivers
4/18/06

In Death, I Found Life Was Only A Beginning

If "all endings are also beginnings",
Then I was meant to save Her.

Newborn calm,
Born again,
A funeral for no one.
But from under the blue came a resounding,
The blood in the trench.

But there I saw him, "Captain", my captain...

I was changed by those months,
With the escape also came my withering.
His shattered skeleton, in the name of sacrifice,
Gave way to a lifetime of regrets.

It felt as though years since I'd seen the pier,
Since my father's fist drowned him in the tide.
A hospital bed, lined with satin, like a coffin,
Was an open window and a scream in the night.

Forgiveness, like death,
Was quick and painless.

As though I'd stepped into the past,
Slept through years of weddings,
Found her. Though I was
Blessed to save the time left
With my wife, my cancer stricken wife,
She left my arms. They, still wrapped around her shape,
Dropped, and I fell into the fire.

Yet when a child's shadow tore through the flames,
And left with the stones to wash away the burns,
To strip and save the girl,
I, ascending to my perch, suspended in the sky,
Slept, waiting till passing for Her arrival.