The Grim Reaper Is Lazier Than I Am

What is there worth writing about but lazy death?
So inept, so unpunctual and mixed up.
He came too early, say lovers
or friends who are not in the will
and have not been secretly pondering
where he has been these last humorless years.

Stovepipes, perhaps, or flash photography;
fresh paint or icy slush streaked with exhaust;
the occasional transcendent moment or a forgotten wallet.
Spring before summer; autumn and the hasty harvest of departure overdue:
still shots of a sheet of ice as it breaks into the morning of its acceleration, strolls into the afternoon of high velocity and comes to rest with a twilight splash in the soft memory of the ocean where it lingers and gradually melts away into nothing.