An Absence of Parachutes

Your eyes have gone empty as earthenware. There are no more tragedies, no selections, no decrees. There are just faces numbed or edged to laughter: old stories of expediency, slow dancing to mechanical music. All things turn ocher and eggshell. It is hard to believe in anything, yet we persist, honoring stones crumbling to the hug of weeds. We are akimbo in the night, afraid of silence; locusting ears with noise, choosing not to remember the abyss, the waking or the lack of waking. You are reaching for cords and falling, arms spreading to parachutes but catching death - its cold face caught at the window, meerschaum, smiling, fresh through centuries.