Poetry
burdens i
the burdens were left
unremembered,
except in words
that had no memory,
and erased themselves
with time,
palimpsest written
and rewritten
in a scrawl of consciousness
blurred
by randomness,
until the dead stopped it
with their silence,
never forgetful
though forgetting is its knowing.
the family is now dead
in words that give
no finality to feeling.
skies graze on the wonder
in my watching.
frozen in words
the sign has lost its innocence,
but they too are smoke
dissipating in reverie,
where home at last finds
its myth.
burdens ii
i granted the tombstone
its own wish,
for it weighed more
than my thoughts
ever could,
being dry rain from clouds
that dissipated
before they fully formed,
solids run aground
on the shoals of empty sky.
angels, you never gave yourself
to my eyes,
although i found your wings
in every fleeing word,
and your body
in the quickening silence
they left behind,
buttressing the invisible.
weary words
in the wake of the gods,
marking their death in stone,
inscribed
with the poetry of indifference
that is lasting truth.
burdens iii
i couldnąt know
what you could know
being all-knowing death,
but i knew you
where you didnąt know yourself,
in the dew
that coated the mirror
of my memory,
in the stars that focused
the everlasting freshness
of light,
each a sacred scrap
treasured
by the wondering eye,
waiting to be pieced together
by its wandering
into a wholeness
too mythical to ever
be seen again.
you filled consciousness
until it burst
the seams of meaning.
the dead poured out of time,
free to parade
in their newfound innocence,
their bodies purged of time
and fully mythical,
heaven at last in their noble calm,
the great gift
of your wisdom.
