about endings/ .enduring.

Shroud

*i.

The backs of the leaves are bowed
under the weight of an orphan snow. Steadily
steadily, this forlorn blanket hides
the greens and grays of a summer-like April night,
blustering about
clean yellow tulips and gracing sun-kissed surfaces
with abrasive white
garments: acidic. And I,
watching the decay of a burgeoning beauty Spring, see
Snow
caressing tree-trunks,
seductive, consuming, unwilling to be
abandoned,
forgotten,
alone.

the weight of this icy frost slows my heart;
its death-shroud touch darkens my sight
with a slow sorrow that aches like the End
of what promised to be a
beautiful
new
beginning...

*ii.

Saw a brittle, brown flower, bent: soul-spent.
Realized: what froze my breath, murdering
the newly-born buds of hope in my heart
made him rejoice; this alien April's
winter whiteness was to him
a child's snowy playground: unspeakable
comfort in the dead of night.

I stand
to command:
be still, my aching heart!
Have silence, my raving soul! Take trust,
put patience, like a balm over your wounds;
All shall be well.

and yet--
MaNiaCAL mOuRnINg:
frosted leaves are
Burnt
by the cold, my face
by these tears, pouring
pouring like the rain that should have come
to nourish the green beauty of new
Life
in this place...


*iii.

Wish i'd Never grown
above the earth
to taste this awful plague.
Whitened, Silent,
a tomb:

Welcoming the destroyer of
Spring.

~marykathryn huffman
first committed to paper:
5/23/05
edit 7/19/05
edit ii: 2.28.06 5.03 pm london
edit iii: 4/03/06 11.49 pm london,
because i want to be done with it.

~*~**~*~

:Fall:

a dusky-green hilltop at midnight,
on my back in prickly grass, gasping for
air and wiping the sparkling sea from my eyes,
find myself among evergreens, sparsely gathered
here by human hands, feeling their needled sharp
buffeted by the same inexplicable
winds of whisperings:
}indecipherable{ as i.
~
the grass shivers in silvery expectation; there
is a single star in the smoggy city sky.
i think we would all ascend above
if we could.
each stem, each leaf
--- struggling ---
for its next breath, to pull nutrients
from a parched and
poisoned earth. . .
~
we must endure here
as we can-- take
joy in each moment of green
each splash of cool
water each
pixie-sparkle of Io-dust-starlight:
stretch out to touch the blessing of
Earth.

~marykathryn 2004?