The Living's Adolescence

I called you from the staircase bottom while

Pictures of your departed ones looked about,

Longing to taste youth again, and that’s when

I realized my pretty one’s no longer a reed by the river.

Holding back, I kiss you on the cheek under

The smoky eyes of your mother on the wheelchair,

A bog of tired flesh, avidly caressing her life destroyed

Nervous to suffocate her envy in bakery and pastry of all sorts.

A trace of summer heat in available November,

Cherries make beautiful earrings when

Your youth, and delayed decay, rivals with theirs.

Looking west from the hill to the wheat fields

My blood is worked, hated and cried upon a

Sky so outstretched, wide, uncomfortably slumbering,

His wisdom could tear the unaware soul apart.

I must do everything I can to keep us here so look,

I made a coat of new fog for you only,

So that you might not be cold as we run circles

By the churchyard, breath culled by the bell

Ringing its awkward melody to a place of peace

Where the dead, demure, know the pleasures

Of their assigned place, and living is nothing but

A distant memory, of which we’ll laugh one day.