Roy Herndon Smith
Words like birds flit through,
settle in, and fall out of
space—matters of time.
Thoughts like butterflies,
flutter, light, and dissappear—
moments of color.
Death’s not what I dread,
nor loss, nor suffering, but
the still small gaze of
a child who’s been torn
out of a mother’s embrace
and has stopped crying,
the erasure of
even the memory of,
the thoughts of, the words
for, mother, leaving
not even absence—a blank,
the unacknowledged
extinction of a
color, butterfly, or bird—
a matter of time.
dust 