August eight: the truth has yet to be told:
a year, leaked away drop by stale drop,
has only left toxic staining spots.
They glare and moan with rubbing.
Perhaps the truth will never be told;
the telling: soothing balm or albatross,
a healing or a festering more vile;
the undoing more hurtful than the doing?
August one and sweet gum leaves,
enough to notice, are falling yellow
on wilting grass. The air is dry;
the parching season; joy does thirst;
I crave a single meager bliss:
a sip of wine, a furtive smile,
but for now this cool wind gift will do.
August two and insidious privet
tentacle roots spit depleted red-
clay clumps at me. I fight to claim
a needed though paltry victory
before winter’s cold, harsh truce.
August three and butterflies flood
their namesake shrubs decoding
nectar’s notes on divine law while
breeze and chime synch our requiem.
with violent disregard they’re wrung
every drop freed from cauldron clouds
parched dazed earth hisses till sated
casting with gratitude excess away
along fated paths to pool in pooling places
again to rise to mimic our myths of ascendant souls
trees now sing with discordant bliss
sweet as sun-baked honeysuckle scent
When five, she scraped in soft, black ground
a hole—a grave—to cuddle what she found
below the steps; a baby turtle; dead.
Splayed neck and legs and cracked green shell
told her of death and worse, of disregard.
She took her sister’s glass jewel-box
and lay Turtle in on velvet cloth, covered
him over, patted, caressed his final bed;
she sang a song she’d heard the choir sing
while fashioning a cross from sticks and string.
Three days straight, she exhumed his remains
but Turtle’s knowing smile did not change.
At death, soul flies, flesh melts away, they said.
At five, she wanted only fireflies’ night vitrine
to sooth a disquiet mind; to run, to sing.
Most conspicuous soarer of Georgia skies
floats for eons circling till I grit my teeth
in expectancy and finally he, snagging
a hot air lift, shoots up straight, ascending
like Jesus, wings stiff with ecstasy,
blood stained beak thrown open to sing
hosannas, but not for my ears. Then more
eons and satiated or fearful of God-light or
despairing still of Paradise lost, a minute
wing-tip-dip spirals him in delirium down
to vanish behind pine’s dark façade;
shade veiled refuge for his grotesquerie.
I should have trekked more;
risked unmapped excursions; not
Vegas, Turkey or New Guinea,
those lauded, exotic locals; no.
I should have taken LSD or
chewed some shrooms and
luxuriated in my own colors,
sniffed the illusive waft of wild,
instead:
I’ve traipsed these bland locals;
wary of running aground,
of taking a hike in flip-flops,
of eating forbidden fruit.
I crossed the line without noticing;
stepped over it as I missed my turn
or as I mumbled execrations at the
4-way stop, unsure of when to go.
Yesterday I heard a guy mumbling,
reading the words I carry on my back
as he overtook me huffing hard,
“Old man! Old man! Old man!”
“But Time, which Nature doth despise……makes Hope a fool..”
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Raleigh cursed god Time without respite,
For Time in his depravity promised
Only a drying up; fragility
Of dust; the loss of wit and lust’s sweet rut.
At least, he thought. But Hope implies a wish.
What was your wish Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir?
A youth eternal? “Yes! Get real old man!
Why would Nature despise old Time,
who in his laxity and joy, allows her
her endless creations and enjoyments,
savoring of the exotic you yourself sought.
Time in his laxity allowed you to be,
as he did the tree and myths of gold
and, yes that executioner’s ax, too.
“Strike, man strike!”
What was that careening zing that passed my ear?
Could it be an atom repurposed from your spilt blood,
(when they took your head) now an invisible speck
in a mote of dust (your despised dust) whirling in air?
Though not in your preferred form, you still exist
in physicality as well as in histories memories.
What more could you have wished, Sir Walter, Sir?
Nothing is hidden, buried perhaps;
dozed over by heavy machinery
or a synapses misalignment sends
the thing astray or it sits waiting, but
it is not unknown and, unlike you and I,
reeks of patience till revelation.
There’s a creature, little known and blind,
that eats its wandering way about;
much like, in appearance, Lumbricidae
and without judgment devours the gist
of us, leaving a trail of detritus to be
burned in heaven’s fire on that final day.
The tether is broken; the frayed end
fades into nothingness, detectable only
to great-grandparents, severing me
from those that were the first to come.
·
Records were lost or never made
by those chosing to inter their pasts,
to cherish their second/chance lives.
Were there no offices held,
·
were there no fortunes earned,
no martyred selves, no gloat,
no consuming greed, no illicit loves?
Were lives too sordid or too slight to claim?
·
Were there no poems sung?
Belated Words 