softly sweetly blew the wind
on the old man's tattered cheek
as each year passed a new one creeped
to death, to sleep, to dream

a single ring, held faintly now to his wrinkled, gnarled digit
a near lifetime of tears, of memories gone
no longer to hear love's joyous laughter or sorrowed cries
and yet to hear just once more the slight autumnal whisper or faint echo

the wind came harder still as the dying man fell to kneeling bow
and raised his tired arm to grasp at the stone before him
and with life's last gasp and fleeting thought, held strong the tombstone's brow
inscribed just plain, no harkened angelic script upon a pauper's grave

'forever'