The dead stand before green Osiris
waiting to be judged.  How did they
handle it so easily, that assembly line

of death?  To make it individual,
each soul led by the hand, Isis and
Nephthys, gentle in elegant dresses,

wearing the moon on their crowns.
Every single heart gets weighed
against a feather sitting on perfectly

balanced scales. Anubis looks on,
composite beast denied again,
and again.  Ibis-headed Toth writes

it all down.  Today the Nile floods
once more.  Green life germinates from
black ooze.  Judgment without hell

or pain or bodies writhing.  Death
without flames, only a boat winding
out of the harbor like an arrow

speeding to the heart of a deer,
a hawk tracing sun’s golden path
across the vast blue desert sky.

[Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  Flutter Press has recently published two chapbooks: My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word and My Father had Another Eye.]