Encomium: on health

Of all the things we love anew only when they have left us, perhaps the greatest is this.

Strange, how we can hold something too closely, so that we know only the loss of it,

never the having. Breath slips in like an unknown traveler at an unlocked gate. We sing no praises to skeletons that do not ache, days without pain pass us without a greeting.

All of this, all of this, until something--poison, intruder, devil--slips in to steal away these unloved friends. Draped in black, aglow with mourning, we cry out for those we never loved. To any who will listen, we beg for their return, and into cloths we sing out a snorted call of sorrow.