Orchard

My blood remains adrift and lingers
up here.

One might say that I have died.


For some time the fruits of silence
have ripened and now fall
dead to the dark earth with echoes of
too many years.

Anti-gravity verse creeps in thru strange
little windows of the mind now.

Is this all there is in open fields of twilight
and churning winds?


The world doesn't understand,
so let me make it plain--
I have seen the stars and all their glory,
the thunderous silence of a glowing orb's
wax and wane!

Tho the scattered images of sunrise and foamy air
will not tempt my heart again to
sway thru the atmosphere with wild abandon, drunk with
the hope of another inept year.

The paths have grown muddy and thick with thorn
Far & away the hills gleam fire over brown, dead terrain
and I cannot stop waking from
the dream
that dies
every
day.

There has to be something with no end,
a darker wood where one cannot pass,
tremulous bird-song shattered
by the howling Night or
Hard trees devoid of form, whichonly bear
ghostly fruit,
in long-lost,
much wilder orchards than these.