Anniversary Blues
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O’ to fade! To pass! To rest! To die!
To ponder, to listen
and not forebode -
you were as a thresher to the chaff
and the driven wind
that winnowed.
The thunderclap of Tawhiri raging
silence not a loving
fool’s complaint,
nor portend for whom the bell tolls
when the echoes
of time grow faint
My heart alas divided against itself
knows not what to say
or what to feel,
and with ponderous words recited
I return your resting
place to kneel.
Some final absolutions shared alone -
cold black rain upon
my brow and cuff.
Judge not a froward son - I am who
I am, and have
been judged enough
We are but the quick and the dead,
and just or unjust
no keeper of time.
O tell, what sin was imputed to you?
What concealed divine
law or crime?
And what burden so dark the lamps
of Heaven and Earth
burn less bright?
I ask do we in this realm find peace
or is death’s victory
our only respite?
Only in beds of posthumous sleep
will end my
unspoken confessions.
Nay, I no longer exhume the past -
it rebukes all my
searching questions.
From umbilical dawn to end of days
I failed you - I added
unto your woe.
In life and death there comes a time
when to hold on
and when to let go
May your life and times early passed
live on in the heart
that lives in me,
for in all the silent screams below
is my own howl
in my own vanity.
As I pen my verse the charcoal sky
again rumbles softly
over a distant knell.
No loss, no sorrow, no love unwept
can unring that
fearful tolling bell
Written: July 1991
Copyright © Keith D Trestrail | Year Posted 2022
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