Not the Reaper

A visit from the Reaper…

Winged, the dark creature peered down,
its eyes lost in hooded shadow,
arm outstretched
as if to plea audience,
hovering ominously overhead.

No sound uttered
entered my dulled pallid shock,
eyes wide, unbelieving,
and this old heart barely contained,
beating a blur of what I’d once thought to mock.

Yet here stood this being,
so dark in its considered intention,
so close to my fear of the reaper,
a still and frightening moment
of non intervention.

And then it slowly descended,
to a place too close to my awkward stance,
its hand, gnarled and bony pointing,
to my steely cold and frozen
facial glance.

Its labored breath just echoed,
like an unwanted wordless phone call,
and for a moment I fervently wondered,
if my imagination had lost the plot,
or stalled.

Then to my disbelief it spoke,
in a rasping guttural grind,
‘you got a cigarette?’ it leached,
‘I’m out and too far from home’,
had crossed its mind.

I stumbled over words unsaid,
gulped and swallowed half my head,
and eventually with my tongue in place did answer,
clear as mud,
‘I, I, I don’t smoke’, I said.

‘Fuck!’ it replied,
none too pleased, then disappeared,
and I a blithering mess,
having expected my death so near,
as I fell to the ground panting.

Tony DeLorger © 2016

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Tony DeLorger

Full time author, freelance writer, poet and blogger since 1999. Twenty one published works, past winner of 'Poet of the Year' on HubPages, 'Poem of the Year' on The Creative Exiles, writer for Allpoetry.com, Google+, tonydwtf.blogspot.com.au
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