1987, Verulam
On the balcony, the crackling, slow, long drags
Below, pedestrians on the busy street
The Elder's face lit by the glow of the ember,
enough to hint a sign, was it concern,
before it was hidden by exhaled smoke
The scent mixing with dhania and mint
and the sounds with the TV reporting another alert
The hopeless days, then, burned and festered,
transpiring from a litany of murders into the years ahead
as they were read into the record from a prompter.
The Elders' voice, exhaled slowly,
The Study observed, closer, the expression was less concern
suggesting all the madness was, in some way, sensible.
The distant green hills, covered in black night,
echoes of mayhem from corrugated bellies
life preparing for burial in the approaching attraction
the grass clothed, as the dutiful moon behind the cloud,
and morning rays somewhere far away, which
by a morrow's noon would certainly scorch and sear
The starved caged spirits that would no longer grin
nor slow their paces toward life's bidding knocks
but suffer jabs and kicks that would consume us one by one.
The sense lay there in the voice, trained aloof distance
An attitude that kept us marching quietly, bearing all weight
even after you'd gone, and into all the nights ahead
all quiet aloneness the many leavings and waitings bred.
The kitchen now without delicate hands, but
life's scent has not left, the mayhem grew
yet, all the quiet love remains.
trumanity, 11 May 2018, 20 May 2022
#poetry #crosstitutional
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