30 Mar The Birchwood Falls Quiet or, the Silent Almighty
Posted at 12:36h
in Poems
Deep beneath high-leafed trees
Here the pelting greyscale leaves
No longer fall, no longer stir,
The hoarfrost clings to the ground
And whisking fog rolls all around
I know this is the ever-after;
But I had hoped for something new,
To fall upon me like morning dew
When the cadence came for the song,
That the band would still just play along,
A song without one to supply it,
The notes to strike or soul to guide it;
The empty came and none defied it
When the birchwood fell quiet.
Did no one teach you how to share
A kiss, a bed, or a loving stare,
Or did you grow up all alone?
Do you remember your first love
Or are you still waiting and dreaming of
Something like it to call your own?
The heavens bowed and took a chance
To give us what we called romance,
But such a thing exists no more,
People knew not what it was for;
Now nothing is new for the young,
Poetry reads like a foreign tongue,
And things are said that should be sung
When the birchwood falls quiet.
Walking over dunes by the sea
I cried out when where it should be
Was only sand on the forsaken shore,
And no sound emerged from my lips,
I could not scream for what does not exist
And heaven is too far to hear me implore
For if He were close enough to hear it —
The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit —
He might rend the skies open again
To loose the lights from the lion’s den;
But dawn never broke to spill the day,
Like seaweed-waters dark with decay
That every marvel could pass away
When the birchwood falls quiet.
Nothing somber, nothing calmer,
What speaks for itself speaks no longer,
I wonder not about the silent wonders
Whose voice once rang in violent thunders
But died to eyes dull and defeated,
Like the day the king and army retreated:
He dressed up the fool in his regalia
And fled that morn under skies azalea…
Then the tempest drew breath
With a stony face of death
And drowned them all in its wake,
But the fool alone it did not take,
And without purpose, he never spake
When the birchwood fell quiet.
And did you know if you say
To a ladybird to fly, fly away,
It might never return to you?
Seven generations lost
By striking seas indifference-tossed;
O beautiful fury, find me wanting too…
Power sees the world in black and white,
Even if you colored rose your sight
Over magnificence a veil will fall,
Monochrome camouflages all,
And even if words could define it,
No valor is left to rise and riot
Except when trying to deny it,
When the birchwood falls quiet.
The band played “Amazing Grace”
I asked what that meant nowadays,
But it was just a song they found,
And I laid small in ichor-gleam,
And here I cannot even scream
In a haunted glade devoid of sound,
And the Devil is so dearly fond
When the wood of God will not respond
To circle me with angels fell,
“How different can this be from Hell?”
And far away in some elusive sea
A hearse of white waits for me
Some call Him God, but not lately
Since the birchwood fell quiet.