Jan 2021
I.
On this day, a quotidian wind may carry the force of anger,
May lash out at the stoic trees which surrender only dying leaves,
An offering of dead letters falling in a farewell dance to meet the earth;
Jagged notes to touch the dust—that surely tell of sterile promises.
II.
No matter the meadow he is still claustrophobic,
For everywhere there is too much of the world at once.
He parts a stalk of corn in a gleaming field
To hear and to remark upon the bees teeming inside,
Which would otherwise rest in the eyelids of wildflowers.
"You know," he thinks to himself, "we would not feast without the bees;
Where there are bees, so there is the cornucopia."
He speaks only to himself.
III.
“It is now 12:00,” the well-dressed man interjects between the widow’s sobs.
“Would you like to take the flowers with you?”
Softly she turns a knuckle to her eye, effacing her tears.
“Yes. Yes, thank you,” she replies in a hushed voice.
—or shall we let bouquets chance the untold tide of darkness,
The cold, unforgiving colossus of night?
By morning they shall have withered completely
In the cool hospice of the soil.
And so we move on.
IV.
The undertaker sweeps beneath the grass and dirt
Not merely bodies, but our heap of hours.
With bodies also go the games and the houses of words we built
And lived in.
Now by landslide they slip into silent coffins.
Let certain words be backwards-facing windows looking out upon the brink,
That singularity of past and now that ferries our tomorrows
On uncertain streams
Where our worlds do not grow taciturn.
V.
It is now time to leave this place.
It has always been the time; that faceless phantom
That inhabits all things and makes all things sick and wish to die.
It is time.
A child’s eye shines upon you but is eclipsed.
An old friend whispers something like goodbye.
A stranger greets your shell and is amused.
A dark spate of moonlit oceans rises and falls upon a transient seedbed of memory.
There where you were, so shall you return,
Birthed
And nurtured and loved
And carved and posied and constellated.
Your form swells beyond the human meridian;
Ribbons of color spin about your head, decked in a halo of stars,
And the pulchritudinous lifelike light—
On this day, a quotidian wind may carry the force of anger,
May lash out at the stoic trees which surrender only dying leaves,
An offering of dead letters falling in a farewell dance to meet the earth;
Jagged notes to touch the dust—that surely tell of sterile promises.
II.
No matter the meadow he is still claustrophobic,
For everywhere there is too much of the world at once.
He parts a stalk of corn in a gleaming field
To hear and to remark upon the bees teeming inside,
Which would otherwise rest in the eyelids of wildflowers.
"You know," he thinks to himself, "we would not feast without the bees;
Where there are bees, so there is the cornucopia."
He speaks only to himself.
III.
“It is now 12:00,” the well-dressed man interjects between the widow’s sobs.
“Would you like to take the flowers with you?”
Softly she turns a knuckle to her eye, effacing her tears.
“Yes. Yes, thank you,” she replies in a hushed voice.
—or shall we let bouquets chance the untold tide of darkness,
The cold, unforgiving colossus of night?
By morning they shall have withered completely
In the cool hospice of the soil.
And so we move on.
IV.
The undertaker sweeps beneath the grass and dirt
Not merely bodies, but our heap of hours.
With bodies also go the games and the houses of words we built
And lived in.
Now by landslide they slip into silent coffins.
Let certain words be backwards-facing windows looking out upon the brink,
That singularity of past and now that ferries our tomorrows
On uncertain streams
Where our worlds do not grow taciturn.
V.
It is now time to leave this place.
It has always been the time; that faceless phantom
That inhabits all things and makes all things sick and wish to die.
It is time.
A child’s eye shines upon you but is eclipsed.
An old friend whispers something like goodbye.
A stranger greets your shell and is amused.
A dark spate of moonlit oceans rises and falls upon a transient seedbed of memory.
There where you were, so shall you return,
Birthed
And nurtured and loved
And carved and posied and constellated.
Your form swells beyond the human meridian;
Ribbons of color spin about your head, decked in a halo of stars,
And the pulchritudinous lifelike light—
