They never understand;
Or ever comprehend
The severity of my decision.
I'm convinced I have control,
Yet those I dearly hold,
Keep hold on their derision.

I know I'll find remission
For commissions and omissions;
My love was never so cold.

She'll say I never loved her;
There always was the other
Stopping us from growing old.

As a young man in love,
I was selfish.
I walked with you,
I shared food,
I slept with you,
It was my insatiable thirst;
Desire, and
I needed to gulp it,
At any cost,
For survival.
Perhaps you felt likewise.
I didn't know.

Now, being older,
That
Which I do
Out of love,
I do for you.

Crosses white, poppies red,
Remember how, remember when
Pale petals fell from blooming roses,
And padded paths where freedom goes.

Fierce fires doused a would be hate,
To quench dry hearts, yours and mine.
Their love and duty burned paper chains
That shackled in war time.

Wise eyes, bright minds, aged souls, young hearts,
Traded rockers for grassy beds;
Gave up gray for blue-black youth,
Now honored among our dead.

The rose that's guarded by the thorn,
Against the reach of many hands,
Does the same in all God's lands:
Yet still the life sap flows.

This time of year is here again,
But remember how, remember when
Canadian pulses played taps then.
Remembrance Day must never end.

Birds don't rain down from heart attacks,
Or aneurysms: we should be waist high
In hundreds of millions of feathered bodies.
Where are they?
Not like us, who fall in the strangest places:
Stop signs, ball games, synagogues, schools.
And we cover them, step around them,
Chalk mark floors and sidewalks,
And eventually pick up the pieces.
But we can't perch on live wires,
Or fly between wind vanes.
Where are the bodies.
Domestic or feral.
Look to the sociocat,
Though innocent,
It prowls by nature.

I went to Winchester again,
It's been forty years since then,
When we were awed in the nave,
Stood over Jane Austin's grave,
And loved the irony of golden St. Joan.
The chest coffins hold bleached bones,
The stained glass mosaic filters the sun,
And everything appears the same.
I had perfect recall,
I remembered it all,
Before returning my self-guided tour.
I lowered my head
Through the Refugee door;
To return no more.
Your memorial  has faded;
My memories got jaded.

Sticks and stones will break our bones,
But those words are surely killing us.

Words of repression, hate and scorn,
Roiling words that slash and burn.

Throw a stone, wield a stick,
Don't use those words that rile the sick;
The haughty right that smile then sneer,
That march with torches, emitting no light;
Saluting with an arm out tight.

Sticks and stones will break our bones,
But words are surely killing us.

He's pulled the wool over our eyes,
But there's a thread I can yank;
The fabric will unravel;
We will see again.