Getting Eaten by a Tiger’s Skeleton

People fear the lively dead,
Their own and the world’s remains,
From skulls and ghouls to vaccines.

We’re past the Day of the Dead,
And we’re past All Hallow’s Eve,
But we’re never past ambush

From what we choose to believe,
Probably since we don’t choose,
Really, do we? Students write

Essays on faith for college,
Students with faith in college
To improve their salaries

Over the long haul of life.
No one in class mentions faith
In ambush by revenants,

The one faith all seem to have.
Some of their lives will not have
Long hauls, thinks the professor,

Remembering a student
Who died just after writing
This same assignment on faith,

Memory like a tiger’s
Skeleton in the forest,
Stalking the surviving past.