Light of the World Shine On Me

Calamity spreads his dirty wings Like a vulture, preying on the old and weak The helpless children, shaking and shivering But for a mother's touch In the dim twilight, quiet red on the horizon We kiss him goodbye, slowly and torturously With dry, cracked lips and burnt, peeling skin The ache heavy in our shoulders and hearts restless for sunrise He spreads his dusty wings cautiously, looking back But we do not. He flies away Slowly, heavily, weighted down by so much death and disease He is a sickness growing weary Dying embers of a campfire, Mostly smoking, choking out the last bit of orange Heat as the moon makes a final exit from the sky He flies into a reborn sun Reborn as we will be with the light on our faces A dingy feather lying still on the ground, a reminder He is a ghost now, a whisper, a silence But ready, always ready to return