For a friend

Invulnerable child.

Youthful body of health

and energy. You raced

through your long days

like all the year was Summer.

Your thin shoulders held such

strength. Your arms all but bone,

they could cut through the harshest misery.

I can feel them about my neck.

Even now.

Your pleasant outcry, the din

you made in our home,

I despair in its departure.

Photos hung in the hall will be hollow,

flat and without texture.

One Sunday

On her lap a quiet moment with a book of trains,

or cowboys and Indians, or a page of wild color,

exotic animals half hid by jungle brush,

or single letters that then stood for dog or cat or xylophone.

I do not remember.

There on her lap

she whispered in my ear the words of a story,

the beginning middle and end not at all important,

only her voice,

soothing tonic I must have cherished.

Happy Halloween

hollow cavity,

the rot of ages could not enlarge,

then and now no heart to know compassion.

I was that murderer, that blank stare,

the beast inhuman that villagers burned,

the tale parents spun for truant children,

the terror at night, her eyes wide and sightless in the dark.

Headache tonight

Solitary note, digit hovering

ever over ebony key.

You can descend only once

and change is known.

A new and common-sensed wisdom whispers

that Silence, my former comfortable companion

is not music

nor never music was.

What rut one makes.

Any errant wheel but senses Familiar

and the precipice of Same’s a silhouette shadow.

The mold once poured, and sunsets dried,

remains and reminds.

But wait

Caution’s a coward yet keening the unknown note.

listen

The Sound will surely surface.