They called him the End, the silence of bone, A shadow that walks through the valleys alone. They painted him ruthless, a thief in the night, With hands made of winter, extinguishing light. But they only saw the black edge of his cloak, The hood pulled down low like a curtain of smoke. They did not see hands that were gentle and old, Or the glowing embrace in the dark's quiet fold. He comes without hurry, he does not demand, He waits by the bedside and opens his hand. When the breath finally slows and the tether gives way, He catches the glimmer that slips from the clay. He asks not for greatness, for statues or fame, He asks not if history whispers their name. He gathers the fragments of what it meant just to be, The radiant drops from a vast, human sea. He scoops up the warmth of a welcoming door, A kitchen with flour spilled out on the floor. The steady, soft voice in the dead of the night That told a scared child it would all be alright. He gathers the courage of years spent in gray, The strength of a soul that kept walking anyway. The flawed and the broken, the fiercely undone— He gathers their embers and loves every one. For centuries long, he kept it all hid, Beneath the dark fabric, a luminous lid. But a soul is too bright to be buried in thread, And the living still wept for the ones they called dead. So a seam split apart at the brow of his hood, Where the Keeper of Last Light so silently stood. And colors spilled down in a brilliant cascade, Like tears weeping out through the shadow and shade. For he saw all the words that were spoken too late, The heavy "I love you" left out at the gate. He saw how the living would search through the years, For a trace of the lost through a curtain of tears. In the fold of a jacket, the scent of a room, The silence that rings in a beautiful tomb. He wept for the waiting, the grief and the ache, For the beautiful hearts that felt ready to break. But the Keeper knows well what the living forget: That a sun going down isn't finished quite yet. He carries the glimmer beneath his dark veil, To keep the wind off when the spirit is frail. He walks through the sorrow, he ferries the spark, A quiet archivist deep in the dark. Until you are ready, until you are whole, To carry the light of another one's soul. Then suddenly, softly, it catches your breath— A triumph of love over distance and death. A phrase they once used tumbles out of your mouth, Like a bird flying home, migrating back south. A song on the radio stops you right there, And you feel them around you, alive in the air. You offer a stranger a moment of grace, And the light of the lost finds a new, shining place. You cannot hold on to the fleeting, frail breath, But love is a garden that blossoms through death. The Keeper will gather the light when we go, And plant it like seeds in the people we know. So look at the colors that run down his face, He is not the dark, but an agent of grace. He carries the glimmer, the spark, and the ember, To shine in the living, each time we remember.
