A Muffled Pillow Speaks To Him
He awoke, though he could not tell
if it was the middle of a long night
or the middle of his life.
The years before were sodden with autumnal leaves
and so he remembered much.
The mechanics had laid down their tools.
Social engineers played harmonic slogans
to the tone deaf.
A burdensome truth has been put down,
and few dared to pick it up again.
Then there are the girls; they have waited so long
for his kisses, and he now so aware and
no longer sleep-walking cannot undress them
with those velvet infatuations
he had saved just for this moment.
He recalls meadow larks and strong apple cider,
walks paused in the glow of painted lips.
Dark movie theaters, hands on white thighs.
Mountains and the ways around them,
the freedom of real choices.
A muffled pillow speaks to him
of what was once and what could have been.
Again he feels in the middle of both
watching time and circumstance
pull themselves apart.
He thought: How old do you have to be
to be in the middle?
Even now when the evening is closing
virgins easily birth new mornings,
he feels the wetness of their
coming and going.
He was a rough lad,
and he did what roughness can do,
now the melting has left him gentle
and in love with ghosts.
He must move without moving
drift soundless to where a world is suspended
in a timeless amber, an irreducible middle.
The new world order is off-kilter
bare-faced and inclined to decline,
its jellyfish arms glom onto
the frail and unwitting.
He will not leap forward with it,
he will abide now
where the past and future dream his dreams,
stay there at that halcyon center
where the air in his lungs is still sweet.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2021
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