Poem of the Week

It continues fashionable to mourn the death of ritual.

We miss the Neolithic ochre, smoking censers, silly hats

Cthulhu and Harryhausen prayers, all the mystic flap.

No one has ever owned death much better than that.

Still, ours are not that bad.

Hospitals have strict norms,

Specific times and tricky forms,

Rotting fruit and flowers.

We say conventional things at canonical hours.