They keep quiet, the old dead in grey
bedsheets and the young ones radiant white
with a dowdy knot above their heads
stock-still in the Gothic niches
of the trees swaying high
A medieval open-air museum
birdlessly silent with gusts of wind
incomprehensibly rustling
in the leaves that move
what doesn't mean they're alive
I must have a look inside
stare through a microscope
to see if it is me, there
in those busy ports
of ions and molecules
Do they live or die
do they eat or are they eaten
and am I only food
and a ghostly apparition
of my own death?