Mid-March Snow

When people die their eyes change color
As their vision turns inward in the seconds

That close decades of doors. They hear brand new
Sounds from their bodies, of people walking

Away from their jobs for the last time, of a family trying
To sleep the night before they leave a house

Nobody will move back into, of the crew
After the show packing now-silent instruments

Into their individual velvet darknesses.
The brevity is a single color, never seen

Before. Like a snow just before spring
It redefines the shapes of things

And then melts away, too fast and too slow
For consciousness to follow. But one

Does, alone, catching up to an echo, of
eyelids sliding shut against snow’s sudden glare.