A SULLEN DEATH.

A Sullen Death

Africa in wilderness has
Forsaken black crayons.
We are less than what we are-
We speak what we grieve.
The shadows of night are spun
From golden grain;
The snow falls steadily on the plains.
The hills roll and echoes have come
To pass,
The oceans litter and glitter
And destiny remains.
My grandmother died in her faded
Brown rocking chair,
The clock turns and turns in its dial.
I haven’t been here for less
Than a while.
Nursery rhymes poke us through
Pieces of felt.
We rock back and forth
On glimmering grain.
Nothing is what we see-
It is not anyone else.
The struggle of the death.
The struggle of the heartland,
The beginning of us all,
The end of the beginning.
We are rude in awakening.
The sun shines down on us.
Everything is broken,
Even the old tricycle.
I remember, I remember.

Yesterday, you looked back at me.
You were walking down the front porch step.
Your hands on your hips.
You locked eyes.
Everything was a struggle.
Everything was a struggle.
You said you couldn’t remember writing
It on the back of your jeans.
Everything was the same.
Everything was a memory,
Distant in your grief.
The tired hands move around and around.
The tired hands are put in blue jeans.
We don’t know what it is we know.
I am tired, I want to sleep.
I sleep in a hammock in the garden.