La Morte

The sky is misty, like a page
A parchment blank and clean
With colored ink the world is drawn
In shades of black and green

The softly splatter-painted trees
And pencil shaded roads,
The water-colored people stand
Intent upon their loads

Or walk about the painting's streets
And never say a word
Their selfish silent ponderings
Will fester on unheard

A smudge of happiness across
The painting mars its face
The forms the painter painted there
Have lost their ordered grace

The smudge, she stands upon a hill
Her face turned to the sky
The wind blows through her tousled hair
She spreads her wings to fly

She soars above the silent land
Into the misty dawn
She revels in the altitude
But terror spurs her on

The painter thinks her shining form
Will threaten his domain
So he will try to paint her o'er
To end his vision's pain

The brush descends upon her now
She strains, her muscles taut
She tries to flee his whitewash brush
But knows that she'll be caught

She hopes to reach the painting's top
Before she's turned to sky
To see the world beyond the page,
To call and ask it "why?"

Why the painter fears her so
And why the sky is blue
And whether life has answers, or
If life alone is true

If anything exists beyond
She hopes that it will hear
Her painted voice scream painted words
From off her painting drear

The deadly brush has missed her foot
By but an inch and then
The painter will undo his fault
And she shall meet her end

A cloudy line she does not see
Appears and falls behind
She does not the edge because
Exhaustion clouds her mind

The painter's brush dabs vainly at
The edge of his domain
She knows if not, but she has left
The painting's narrow plane

Then desperately she gasps for breath
And strains her wings in vain
To catch a gust of missing air
Despite the burning pain

With what is left within her lungs
She cries her last lament
The painter hears, he does not care:
Her death was his intent

He saw her beauty as a stain
Upon his universe
So then he drove her off his edge
To stop her freedom's curse.