Whatever has lived will
wither, languish, and decay.
time pines us away
aghast in a quagmire of guilt, regret
spilt water, wine? I forget
who did the damage.
No transubstantiation this,
No move into immortal bliss:
This is work of resistance, an inception into art
Of all the heart-wrung soul left in me.
A lamenting for
a passing of the light?
Not quite.
Winter trees stripped
in this vortex of time,
bent, gnarled, entwined 
a modulation of voice, a volte-face:
a variation in rhyme..
Stripped down, dying back to the root,
We leave this shadow behind the sun.
With as much passing grace
As we can muster.
Hot breezes, freezes
the many faces of history. We twist
the mysteries into the measliness of what we wish
were reducible to money, power, prestige..
We need a little empty space and time. .
For everything under heaven is strange and fine
And resists the conformity of rhyme.