Author: Michael Angelo

I have inherited a worthless gift:
the gift of words,
an impotent wind
that cannot shake the feeblest branches of this world,
cannot support a nest, cannot roll a stone,
cannot even feed the poet who gives his blood, and burns
upon its crucible
his soul.

It is a worthless practice, yet I am committed to it
for reasons hard to distill,
like trying to discern the features of a mountain through a maze of trees.

I am compelled to poetry
like a moth is compelled to confuse
a lantern flame for starlight.

To ash, to salt
to the dust that comprises the firmament of dreams,

a bird given the gift of wings under the sea. 

A litany
like snow falls
upon my heart in place of sleep.

A litany for the lost,
for the fading memories.
A winter’s mist, white descending sky,
how it pools and blinds childhood’s dreaming eyes.

Simple joys
bright along a field, once here,
then lost within a veil.
North winds raging, freezing tears to jaw.
Once a child, now a private weeping
winter.

A litany
like heart reels
from toils, from time’s spinning wheel.

A litany for the lost,
for people known, people unknown,
buried beneath mounds of mounting snow.

A broken home,
a father’s noose, love’s betrayal, a world obtuse.
Stars, perfect in their celestial beds, shine,
unmoved.

A litany
like weather weeping
ash.

A litany for the lost,
the smothered child, the leaves
on graves,
dead.

The flowers lie buried,
the mourners sleep forgotten,
all has sunk
under falling,

falling,

falling, snow.

But I will never sleep,
and I will always sing
for you

a litany,

a litany,

a litany…