Waiting rooms are a manifestation
of the Human condition.
We have trained ourselves
to sit and wonder and to twist around
the same thoughts.
Magazines are wreaths
to our patience.
Greeting cards are symphonies,
Condolences which freeze entire memories
out of our days.
Distilled moments bearing the supple hoard
of memory’s hazy, fleeting temperamentalities.

Watch, see how lives that have known one another’s
according to fathomless mappings of time
are still unsure how to react
upon both reaching their confronting
of a child’s never returning home.
As if it were not enough to wish upon
some falling star, knowing it was unfathomable
for them to know how long even that had been burned out.
What worry waits;
How sleeplessness must invade every living minute
to arbor each silence.

I

LEAGUERED in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her lifted hand swings high o'erhead,
Above the waste of war,
The silver torch-light of the evening star
Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.

II

Lagooned in gold,
Seem not those jetty promontories rather
The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,
Uncomforted of morn,
Where old oblivions gather,
The melancholy, unconsoling fold
Of all things that go utterly to death
And mix no more, no more
With life's perpetually awakening breath?
Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,
Over such sailless seas,
To walk with hope's slain importunities
In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not
All things be there forgot,
Save the sea's golden barrier and the black
Closecrouching promontories?
Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,
Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,
A spectre self-destroyed,
So purged of all remembrance and ****** back
Into the primal void,
That should we on that shore phantasmal meet
I should not know the coming of your feet?

you are an oak tree. once strong and powerful, you touched the skies with your rustling sun-kissed leaves and could see all the world. your roots ran deep. no wind could topple your indomitable branches, and the birds found haven in them. the people and creatures of the world would sit in your cool dappled shade while your leaves whispered incredible tales from the east wind, soothing lullabies from the south. when night came, you would reach for the waxing moon, pondering the glittering stories in the sky. you were strong.

now, you are weak and withering, struggling to find respite from the fiery sun and heavy oppressive heat. your naked limbs see nothing and your thirsting roots lie just above the bedrock. life has fled your blighted branches, which crumble at the breath of death. the east wind whistles by you, barely a taunting memory of your life. you turn to the south, but unconsoling silence meets your skeletal branches. night comes. the waning moon stares down mockingly, silencing the glittering stories that once guided your life.