With the inching of a mallet toward a bell,
Now sounds the graveyard cloche’s only bang:
From death to death, it sings this lonely villanelle.

Time seems frozen, now so slow you cannot tell.
But like a glacier sliding in, it hangs
And drips in stepwise motion, slipping toward that bell.

Days abound will peel until but one has fell.
It hovers there; in disbelief, has sprang
From life to death, now covered with this villanelle.

Am I gone already, writing from a shell?
Or not yet born, still writing this harangue,
Fast dreaming in between the mallet and the bell?

Today, tomorrow’s future do I smell:
An acrid mummy rot. My fears then tang-
le, knot and fumble like this clumsy villanelle.

This is tired. I turn off my screen. Dwell-
ing on no more, the darkness sinks its fangs.
With the inching of a mallet toward a bell,
From birth to death, it’s done: my only villanelle.

© 2025 Calder Kusmierski Singer