He is born amid
dust blown from
burnt and dried plains
powdered grime carried
past the James River
conveyed though arid skies
pelting window panes
penetrating cracks
and crevasses

She dampens
muslim sheets
wraps them
around his crib
catching sand
and falling chaff
like a coffee filter
captures grounds
from boiling liquid
draining into the ***

He survives
exposed to
horrors of the 1930’s
gradually he grasps
a new catastrophe
symbolized by woolen
uniforms embossed
with chevrons
and metals
for bravely killing
and destroying uncles
and cousins
committed to expanding
the **** nation

She cries
consols Granny
who frets in vain
repetitively rubbing
her hands across her knees
fearful as her native
beloved homeland
becomes scarred
war torn by
death and torture
beyond imagination.

He recalls crouching
beneath wooden school desks
practicing survival
of an unsurvivable danger
while nations
race to discover
an explosive intended  
to end all war

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the trouble of her laboring ships,
And all the trouble of her myriad years.

And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

The hesitant shadow
of a melancholy poet,
while walking on it's
wobbly undefined legs,
result of light losing to darkness,
speaks to the alert poetic self,
listening with perked up ears,
in a strange dialect of darkness
about 'being in nothingness'