stories in a column with a death knell's accompaniment 

I call them poems.

they look like poems

and they act like poems.

their silhouettes

resemble my profile. 

now comes a funeral's

call as the day begins.

somebody croaked.

a stranger.

a man or woman.

young or old.

only a few can say.

Saint Michael’s bell

tolls in its measured cadence.

a soft breeze from the east,

and sound travels with it in the deep

density of permanence.

this is it.

I call them poems

because they look like poems

and they act like poems.

but outside my window

somebody's completely

removed from everything

past and present and future,

and the knell beckons: "next"?