Elegy On A Sunday Afternoon in Winter

The hanging tree

yields its truth

in the cold black of dark;

but only to the bitter seers

in lonely rooms

where bare, black walls

and cracked glass

mirror their crucified souls.

Watching from a stained window,

a seer in a back room

sees a Spring surprise

beneath the silver ice:

a purple-poisoned river

filled with gaping fish.

He sees no life

when the ice cracks.

Guns in the grey distance;

Killing in winter.

Hunting or war, blood

will decide, and violate the white.

Jagged ice cuts deep

into veins of severed soil.

Cold ruptured land

frozen in a dark dream.

There will be no Resurrection

in the Spring.

Black twigs criss-cross

an enervated sky.

Dead boughs are stripped

of meaning

now the leaves

and flocks have flown.

Restore it now;

the last drop of medicine

gives back meaning to a dying world

through the prism of your dying eyes.

The raven flees the scene

of his latest crime,

beats the black air with

dark angels’ wings;

beats the earth to sleep.