A Reprise

time takes its detail
and life its fullness,

leaving just this theme in memory.

we hum along with
what is left -
a subtraction leaving only
spine and odd flourishes,

what is essential
and the strangest other things.

markers of passage,
of decay;

memories of music
reduced
are still memories
of music.

what remains,
after all,
is a song.

a transmigratory bird

I set your birds free

In the pale nothing of the moon.

hollowness in the bones is a principle.

a transmigratory bird

a new life

but you have been born before so don’t be afraid.

Endgame

I. Act Without Words

Listen:

They are singing against the calm.

Time now

To restore silence

To speak only these last words

In the arc of truth:

Quiet, quiet

Quiet while you are ahead.

Endgame

III. Not I

Listen: 

The sum of all voices

Fills your mouth.

It is your voice.

It is the song of your kind.

See: 

Incapable beasts of noise

Unsilent spirits afloat on the sea

of Time.

with apologies to S. Beckett

Unremembered

There is a memory like the ghosts of leaves

It floats through the silence

Between teeth and trees.

It is almost absent,

Overlooked,

One of the things

Time took.

I have left it back there,

In the snow.

Amongst the ragged trees.

       

 #e

Tertiary Colors

East: a promise,
A fable he favors above all else.

The playground groans,
Fire beneath

If you listen,
Which you do,
It is evident, audible:

Counting, small words and simple
Somewhere in the hollow ground.

The silence has gotten what it came for.

An Inter(n)ment

Hay,

And a head,

Lie above the cold earth.

Picking pumpkins,

Cutting vines.

To forget the body:

Burial,

Husks,

Material need.

Casualties.