In the olden days
they mined towns for their ore
like men drank youth from the
neck of local girls
until everything became brittle
time fled ahead
to something unrecognizable and sour
then we looked up from our tasks
seeing a familiar chink of light in day
years falling away, yellowed pages
surprising us with how many
collected at our feet
how could, all this time have gathered, and
dust in our hair, as we sat, hunched over
our endeavors like hungering cats
without respite?
Without children, our marking
of the passages of life, mislaid somewhere
a half mended cardigan
no longer fitting right
we skipped from pursuit to distraction
thinking it possible to always return
to that hour we woke
our heads wet with the burnished zeal
of awareness
now, now we have slept
without knowing our slumbering
the turn of years into decades
our prodigious output, a heavy weight
on the bare necked sap of youth
staring into the mirror seeing lines
that have crept unbidden in afterglow
like thieves, we still believe ourselves
that youth
with shiny hair and bright intentions
where have they found themselves? Lost
among conifer trees, flitting in and out
like an optical illusion, solitary birch
burying fears of
going blind and birthing cancers
instead of placentas beneath the mother tree
stifling truth
for one of ‘maturity’ and ‘reliability’
ironed sleek on fists of thawed rebuke
though every night as indigo infuses sky
there remains a longing with the starlings to scream
fermenting anguish out into the humus
where nobody, save the desolate lost
might respond to entreaty
and return, by pull of thread
tug of color through dark
that vital spirit cherished
when all else went to rot
amidst the berserker of youth
thirsting on its short straw
determined to drink it all
before we, parched and fragile
in garnishment, got to share
a little of life, just a glance
backward to the days spent dancing
lost in sound, the writhe of
bodies about, surging in a sea
of shared rebuke
of this cold world
where water in the morning on your face
scolds
your vast, lovely, unspoken
dreams
TheFeatheredSleep 