Atop the fields that served as home
for the fragile flower of my love,
I stand as a ruined tower, dark
brooding, remembering
beauty’s smile—
now faded,
washed away by tides of time
along the edges of stony days.
High in my black sorrow,
I bear witness to cruel sight:
the unraveling of those sacred seams
that hold together the horizon.
Each loosened strand,
a kingdom felled;
each thread undone,
a country rent;
a good child born,
one man dead.
Leaves of every near and distant tree
lie like effigies of loss—
I, unable to bear
the sight of a fraying world,
turn my gaze away from its grey peaks—
and to the blue stars
I pray; they so full
of light, and joyful with eternity
—or so it seems,
to the short lived.
Consider
the countless stars that have dawned
and died
before the glow of our very Sun;
our Sun, alone and frightened in black deep space,
silenced and numbed
by explosions lived—explosions gone.
Light itself gutted—sprinkling
as ashes of death,
coalescing into my stone body;
a body that every day,
burdened by the overwhelming weight
of loss,
sinks
deeper into ground,
to be forgotten,
like my love.