On the method of your dying, I am curious and need to know
for my own sake: Do you die petal by petal, dropping languidly
to the sidewalk, or do you fall whole, toppled by the weight
of your brilliance? I want to know if life leaves in an instant
of detachment, or before, or after. Or is it a slow, laggardly death,
one that seeps from the hole left by your un-stemming? Do you
die well, without complaint, or do you clutch at life the way
you cling to brightness? Do you crave the company of moths,
or quickly abandon all desire as the fickle moon abandons you?
First appeared in Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII, North Carolina
Richard Allen Taylor, Poet 