THE LAST OFFERING

You recall a night meadow,
mist urged white by a pale moon,
crickets & peepers random as memories
in their edgy clicks & buzzes.
Fireflies come & go, blinking like bubbles.

You don’t recognize the parasite at first.
It makes no sound, for it owns no voice.
It will not yield an image to your eyes.

Perhaps, like methane in a cemetery,
it is the last offering of the silent dead,
a final message, waiting & all around you.

You recognize it finally
as the formless remainder of what you’ve left behind
& you ache to pull it to life,
to give it form & substance you can grasp.

You recall a moment when,
in that landscape of the dead,
your need fired an image long-since lost–
an image like the will-o’-the-wisp, brilliant
& gone

–Rob Simbeck
Kansas Quarterly