Death and Mourn

For Steve Perry.

Death came for Lazlo Mourn
and turned away. He knows
the squirrel isn’t born
who’ll plant the tree that grows
to make the charcoal for
the forge in which the knife
is hammered out, before
it drinks away Mourn’s life.

The kid’s just twenty-five
not so young, you might say,
but some of Mourn’s old knives
have seen that many days—
the old man’s still alive.
You sure you want to play?