We Are Not Here – A Poem

We are not here. In the clouds, still. 
For all the majesty of life, its tastes and tableaux
trials, torpor, temerity, trinket smiles
timid to the rigors of time, it cannot last.
You know it’s true because that gap in the mist
a new marble path, up the sweeping staircase
onto the silent mezzanine that does not exist
the thin, sighed whispers slow and cease 
And in their long lost place a mirror lake 
of memories, distant layers, enveloping us
all in the cold comforting fog.