Through the haze of dust came
The miraculous love.
Love brought vapors of sweet befores.
“Ahh the smell,” thought he, “This be the
Temptation of youth.” Girls doused in
Thick smell: summer’s scented sand.
T’was not many girls, but one. One who
He loved—He fathomed possible.
Soap and towel, given for the purge.
Dunked in baptismal waters,
But the earth was resilient.
The details are in the fabric.
The fabric is in the details.
Was it his stitching, or the towel’s?
imprinted with a thorny crown.

Georg lay waste to sharp shrapnel pangs.
The hand of Simon reached, gripping
The leatherneck deformity
Off the forsaken war floor.
Spitting slurred speech he raged to Georg
“Take my hand Comrade! Do not wait!
Gas is coming, can not you taste?”
Georg could taste the thicket of dust.
The dust preyed upon him—his youth.
Under cover the two discussed,
The pains of war—the loves they lost.
“I loved my wife” spoke he: Simon.
“I loved my books,” Spoke he: Georg.
“I loved my faith,” Spoke he: Simon.
“Tell me Simon, what good is faith?”
“I know not why—I just hold it.”
“I hold far too much don’t you see?
My father’s will doth burden me.
Besides, what of faith here entrenched?
They let us carry dead men, but
What of faith? I ponder this so.
Should not faith carry us comrade?
Oh how the faith has lost its weight.
Trust me comrade faith will not save.”

Let me know the sweetness of the canopy. The gentle cygnet garden you express in rows. I drift upon the aching embers of the bark of midnight's supper, its kingdom of darkness that I lay upon. Suspended in the air, rocking steadily on a distant plateau, tilling the granules of the earth in my map-lined hands; I pinch the rocks and sand kernels naming places as I snap my fingers. I go to the top of the city I know, a small yellow house in a crowd of tall aspens- and the Catholic church sends me soda and small biscuits, and the Hebrews help me be a better man.

I go to a place which has very small rooms. My legs are like a giant world-sized forklifts that carry the heirlooms of my parents in and out of this universe into another. I make a stride to catch a glimpse of you in passing. I tilt my eyes. I hope that I can see how beautiful you are, once more, if only I lift my head  towards the way in which I know you, or the way in which I once had.