The Keeper (poem)

I’ve put too many flowers at the bases of too many headstones.
All the names and dates have began to blend
of all the people I never had the chance to tell goodbye.
Someone wise once told me to beware the living,
for they rarely know that they are alive,
until they understand the true meaning of pain.
Once they truly feel it, then they claim to have died.
Standing at the foot of an unmarked grave, I turned to the stranger,
but he simply nodded his head, then slowly faded away
before I even had the courage to ask his name.
Sometimes death greets us when we least expect it.
The Grim Reaper isn’t always a foe as much as the keeper,
the guide to the path that leads to somewhere better.