death poems

We sing in the branches,
The birds of night, born brittle
In broken words and melancholic memes,
As holy as the body in a dream
 
Woven in, set upon a tree,
Old and scorned, played out like a fiddle
With worn out strings, a holy see
That’s thrown upon the body in a dream
 
Windows open and close down here—
We listen with fear but cannot hear
And feel we’re being seen
In silence as the body in a dream
 
Until, at last, the knock that rocks the door,
With words that whisper no more—

Leaf and flower
   Have fallen in the wind
A petal gone
   The ocean never ends
The sea mist comes
   An unexpected guest
As even now
   The gray moon lingers west
What little air
   Has blown with pure scent
My father gone
   The door from which he went
As dust is dry
   It finds its life frontier
But loses track
   A line of song unclear
I stop to stare
   The dead moon’s life reflection
But quiet now
   I walk without direction

The moon has shadowed me, like stillborn air
Along a country road, adrift in threads,
Behind a worn out wheel, the pedals bare,
As time leaves nothing here but cast off dead.
 
I share these words with clouds in wind-washed treads,
Where rock-strewn shores in riddled dreams belie
And time has spun in tight a spider’s web
Of figures etched in deep the dusk-drawn sky.
 
With this in mind I set aside my clothes,
Now freshly pressed for travels lost, to where
The door is shut and all my business goes—

Successive years of falling leaves, as gold-
Enameled flowers flitter out, around
The garden nook, with simple stories told
To fragrant crowds at play on dampened ground.
 
This time we sipped a cup of coffee cold
And spoke of speckled, thinning hair once brown;
A crow called out, as if a black-winged scold
That hits its mark and pulls us twisting down.
 
Through God we came from chaos to earth and skies,
And painted all that’s dark a color bright,
As child-like wonder shows through gleaming eyes

A fern surrounds my life like a hollow maze
In the intricate lattice of love’s first gaze;
Following a pattern that guides me on this road
I reach for her lips beneath the mistletoe.
 
My love comes forth with the apple of desire,
A tangled taste that takes a life to acquire;
Magic and nightshade in a mandrake stew,
I drink the nighttime herbs in a witch’s brew.
 
Seared in my skin like a tattoo of her name,
My cry has faded to a touch without shame;
Pulled by a thread that stains the earth and sky