Extinction Event

“The Inner Path” by Catherine Husenau

place my bier on a plinth

aromatic combustible

settle me into transformative

grasp of historical fire

allow me a passage sublime

unto cinders and smoke

all the best worst and last

of me carried aloft by the

winds of a dissipate memory

recondite ritual somber

and sad not for me but for

those who preceded me

apt intellectual ancestors

models and mentors who

lent me their minds and their

mettle accepting me into

their philosophe clan

even knowing that I had

ideas of my own faithful

principles rooted but

not grown in clone of

enlightenment canons

alas I have died soon away

from this world the last

unblooded heir to a

diligent rational rigor and thus

has my tribe gone extinct