Elegy – 7-17-24
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Elegy for Old Growth
Through measures of metered melancholy
The tattered winds sing a rent elegy,
A pensive wail for pristine old growth,
A drifting chant in pure pitch of final farewell –
The mute tongue howls in eulogy
For virgins of a thousand turns around the sun
For helpless giants surrendered in atonal sacrifice.
Gentle titans with feathery boughs lifted their faces
To embrace misted melodies of summer and winter snows
Forest zephyrs sang lullabies for sparrows
Nesting in their rustling wombs
Then shared the secret lyrics of their song
With robins sheltered in their lofty grace of red bark
In evensongs, matins and spring symphonies.
The myrrh of burial mixes with their lingering fragrance
In desolation and in their exposed flesh,
Nude hillsides of purple rage
Scream in final dirges of farewell
Modulated into anthems sung to saplings in circles of renewal
Little ones, like half steps, change elegies to odes
The threadbare zephyr now chants paeans to remember.
I
knew
your woods
through every
quiver of bonfires...
although our music pealed a wind
flamed evensongs quickly languished,
cleaving my breaths into dry twigs; and hushing a faceless moon
with your shadow-dance flight.
Contest 235 of Brian Strand
this can not be
you must not come together
align
straight line of other wise
She said
and I concur
and how
how could he hold her
when stoopdom stands in que for her
and does not suspect
that He was listening
hearing her
softly speaking evensongs
on the seat beside
almost sleeping
driving home
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