The Dead Sing

I heard someone singing
In the night
A sweet
Disembodied voice
Ageless and gentle
Hardly a breath
Merely a whisper
But a sad
Forlorn song
Rolling from the hills
From deep valleys
Of Atlantic waves
Tossing again its white hair
Moaning like a grieving lover
At the stone of her despair
But a song
A melody as silver
As a fingernail moon
The ensign of the bewitched
Rattling the chords of a solitary wolf
The staccato of owl wings
The vesper of a priest
A song as gentle as shadow
Tucked under the darkness
Beneath the flicker of a candle.

It was a song
Without a singer
An apple without a peel
A speech with no words
Love without passion.

Then it resolved
And has never repeated
I know will never come again.

The dead sing
I know they do
But only once
And without conviction.