The Nameless
All summer I wander the cemetery
between the fenced-in family plots
and the ornate stone mausoleums.
Occasionally I find my way to the nameless
resting in the north corner;
orphans, tucked away
a century before
in that one place where
the sod struggled to take root.
There the markers are
little more than sand;
birthdates once carved
reduced to shadow,
as if those dates
were as inconsequential
as the bones tangled
in the roots below.
I wonder if their caretakers ever came
without planting another,
or if they sneer at them, even now,
through the white fences of the
manicured family plots across the path,
convinced that, as in life,
they were destined to make better dirt.
Along the perimeter,
an overgrown pyracantha
swallowing the black
of the wrought iron fence,
so that only the speared tips stretched
from the thorned belly,
every sprig in late bloom;
fragility falling, fair petals
loosed from the branches
to which they cleaved,
spreading casually
where the headstones met the earth
as though there were some covenant
set to celebrate the value of their flesh,
so fleeting, so forgotten,
but so much more to me than
those who busied themselves
buying implied comfort
that will never delay the inevitable.
In Dubitum Veritas
What if he comes asking?
Every now and again I pause to consider—
what? Possibility? Odds are he might come
with tempest blessings, bearing
questions of creation, divine inception, asking how
he came to be in that womb, at that time, and he will know that
we share more than consequence; what then will I do?
Answer the bleakest of his ponderings, unfiltered, uncensored,
the untruth utterances that are not fit for the moment, or
condemn him to know that all men make faults
and my faults made him.
When the time comes,
we will choose whether or not to walk the curves
of the Mobeus strip together, to rehash inches lost and gained
with each rotation, to sift through the honest sands
of hindsight; perhaps then I’ll know
whether or not to share the tale of how our lives
were one day woven, torn, and mended;
but which truths will I tell?
From the symphony of sorrow and joy colliding, it is clear
that all truths are just the sound of the innocence dying.
(re)collection
It comes in flashes,
blurred as the world on the other side
of stained glass;
back deck in disrepair,
untreated, crippled and rotted;
across the threshold
mound upon mound upon mound,
dog kennel buried beneath,
Rubbermaid barrel
brimful with nasty;
compost stewed in pots,
sink full with dishes, water,
and week-old potato peels—
black something steaming with fruit flies;
hallway carpeted in clothes
wet towels mildewed
on disintegrating tile;
half the living room
occupied with cabinets,
ten-year-old renovations
not yet begun;
a shag carpet path,
stained and matted with fur,
weaving through the gauntlet of the unidentifiable,
puerile trappings
frozen in the periphery
decimated by hackneyed chaos;
and beneath it all,
the petals of the lotus
crushed to potpourri—
a reminder of good
long lost.
