UNTIL THE EARTH WILL WASH MY BONES WITH SPRING MELT

The warmth of the April afternoon has

melted the snow and ice covering the road on deep blue morning

into a watery mush;

I think of your graves, the soil still frozen;

none of this water will reach you, yet.

It's natural, of course; the way it has always been.

It's the coldest of consolations

when there should be no graves, yet.

Death can be accepted when it comes as a mercy

after disease and age has made us children again;

white-haired children looking with eyes

that don't recognize their children,

so desperately seeking their own parents.

Then death is a mercy, natural,

and the soil and the water and the roots of trees,

the life in the loam - it's all natural, and

if not good, the way we came to be, so long ago;

growing and dying like plants, the

animals who stole the fire from the gods

and drove away the night and the beasts.

But now, no.

No.

Great wounds have been driven into the world

and they won't heal to me until

the earth will wash my bones with spring melt.

04.04.2018