The Painter In Pompei

A road paved  
with stomped roses.  
Each divet existing  
from foot prints  
housed ants in  
perfectly symmetrical  
lines. Taking their time,  
each insect was calm  
in his or her fate.  
As dreary rains  
follow cows to their  
slaughter a man who  
paints for garbage to  
eat sends his last work  
alone on a small stream  
of runoff from the flood.  
 
Each brushstroke was  
bathed in tears, his deep  
smile quivered in pain  
as the sunbeams shot  
life into each color and shade.  
 
He set the canvas on it's  
course, his frail, withered  
body making no attempt  
to fall, as clouds becoming  
fog, until he could no longer  
see it.  
 
Light, feathery soft, and  
sandy air swept across his  
trail of tears and small  
dark feathers flew about the air.  
 
One adhered itself to his cheek  
and he pressed a sole, shaking  
finger to it's back. Ash.  
 
The entire devastation had evaded him,  
he was unconscious, alone, and  
afraid in the buzzing silence.  
 
His eyes, and lungs burned with  
the sooty cast over the entire  
town.  
 
He struggled to wake, fighting the pull  
of eternity. He stood carefully then,  
strengthened in fear,  
and began to waltz around  
debris, completely blind to anything  
but the grey.  
 
He walked into something, and a  
part of it broke off and crashed  
like pottery.  
 
His hands gently sought what it  
was and traced it's features with  
his fingertips, it was a woman,  
softly sculpted, and  
as delicate as a flower, he surmised.  
 
With a dry, pained, and broken  
sigh he fell to her feet.  
 
"My life, you were taken by  
a drift and I had set you free!"  
 
The woman stood without change  
in the silence.  
 
"You were whom I had tried so  
desperately to find with my  
brush, and colors. I let you live  
and this is what you cause?"  
 
He would have cried if it didn't  
feel like shards of metal in his  
eyes.  
 
"My love, my love, my love..."  
 
He spoke just below a breath,  
and when she took his wanting  
hand and wiped his waiting eyes  
he sagged to the ground with the  
pause of time. The window of existence  
closing, leaving a picturesque  
burial ground to warn the world  
about a love wasted, and reverantly  
lost.