Pompeii

The dusty excavation
Revealed an amazing sadness
A bittersweet testament
To love’s power to bridge
The unspeakable chasm
The eternal abyss
Of pain and death.

There, curled like an apostrophe
One around the other
Were the skeletons
Of two lovers
Each grasping the other
Sharing their last refuge
In the moment of death.

Above where they lay
Into that inglorious sky
Belched fire, smoke, suffocating ash
Strangling all but tender affection
From the throats of two
That knew the other
As an anchor of peace.

One’s finger lifts the chin
Of the other
While the other’s arm
Embraces the one whose eyes
Held the only hope there was
In the hell
Of that moment.

They had no need of flesh or sparkling eyes
To depict their desire for the other
To the archeologists who would find them
Beneath layers of silt and ash.

Even empty eye sockets and vacant rib cages
Are fitting frames
For the majesty of love