Last Rites, by Adrian G R Scott

When I am gone,
take up your kitchen broom,
sweep three stars down
from the cobwebbed sky.

Place the first in my coffin;
its bleach-bright light
will suffuse my guttered flame,
waken life's soiled toil
to the tear-dried home,
prepared.

Place the second
in my tended garden,
where my gardener
will look for me,
where it all started.

Place the last on a chain
around your neck;
wear it as a sacrament
of the lights we kindled.

Then when the stars
tumble from the sky
at the end, our shining
will illuminate scars on
love's invincible face.

From The Call of the Unwritten, by Adrian G R Scott, available here.

High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

 And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

 Sunwards I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

 Of sun-split clouds – and done a thousand things

 You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung 

 High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,

 I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung

 My eager craft through footless halls of air,

 Up, up the long delirious burning blue

 I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

 Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;

 And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

 Put out my hand, and touched the face of god.