an evening,
a morning,
a coughing grandfather sighing
with all the weariness of a dimming afternoon.
raining,
windy,
the old flower-tree of grandmothers tap-tap-tapping
against the window.
late spring roses dropping dew and dropping petals
lodging their greenish stem-thorns in boiling bloodstreams
hooking their way into the red-thick muscles of hearts
biting paler lips and weaker tongues,
signing songs of dusk and
coughing,
coughing in the afternoon
in their shallow slumbers of  evenings.
call on me weakly,
carry me not into the evening of love,
dimming lamps and fleeting, snoring breaths
call on holy mothers with no more silence
than the tap-tap-tapping
of those flowered grandmother trees.
a morning,
an evening,
parallels of forced breaths and sighing leaf-whispers,
the childish way of half-falling off beds,
shallow, deep, ragged, grumbling inhalations
of neveragain places,
dreams of highlands and weepings of meadows
and woodsmoke in summers.
weep not for life, weep not for death,
weep not for the salty tears in your mouth
weep silent, weep quiet, weep beautiful and stoic,
weep as pretty
as those flowered window-tapping trees in wind and rain,
bite your pale rose-lips like those greenish stem-thorns.
and in the morning,
and in the evening,
sleep deep, sleep deep, sleep deep
but do not weep.