beachcomber

Silent
I walk the shores of my waking
And spend quiet hours
Gathering bits and pieces of once beautiful things
That broke against my barriers in the moonlight

The rock that shattered
And the salt that polished
Have left only fragments
Glittering remains of great worlds and deeds
Ages old

I scoop them up
And spread them on the mantel
Where I hope they will remain
Until I return to them

On my next vacation

Some are lost but a few wait gathering dust
I blow them off and sneeze and sigh
Over my inability to understand what once they were

I carry them to a more scenic setting
With the hope of stirring memories of these
Now meaningless emotions
Their intensity fades under the brilliant scrutiny of the sun
And I know only that though their moment has passed
Still they remain

I pluck a silver strand from my temple
And string them together
The necklace with which I adorn myself
Is heavy

a sort of reconciling

You prepare your confession online
The only green patch left
There is life here
Stuffed into these vertices
With a razor-edge knife
You can scrape it out
From under the baseboards
Hide it in your cheek pouch
Before anyone notices
And slip quietly out of the box
And into the square
The host is meant to share

You marvel that the squirrels remain so fat
In all this snow!!!
You tried to feed them
But their palate is... selective
And fennel in snow is more suspicious
Than heiresses sunning themselves on the upper deck
But these aren't Riviera squirrels
They need heartier stuff to satisfy
The hunger that leads them to scrape electrical wire
Snow plow-like

And I need more than words
To satisfy