Eden, Looking Back

One wrapped in money,
one in sin:
The shadow puppets dance begin,
They eat each other in the end.
A summer in the country—bliss,
Our Mother takes, our mother gives;
New flowers born, the daisies die,
And the monsters come alive.

2

How numerous the limbs, the vines,
That Mother Nature twists through time—
Each after another of their kind:
The changelings as they come to breathe;
pass through newborn forests in the spring.
A walk amongst a place once bare,
The great Magnet—it moves them all,
From the orbit of the sun,
to shooting stars that we see fall.
From the first path to the last.

3

The threads behind it all, they loom,
In the stillness of a rented room,
In the Autumn I watch bloom,
their endless walk upon the road:
a walk amongst once empty places,
walking on hallowed ground.
Ivy runs under the house,
Her tear-stained eyes turn pink, they swell:
truth is the poor man’s holy grail.

4

Beyond the rug in Hera’s hearth,
In the unending cosmic yard—
Saturn is another piece amongst her lighted pearls;
And Earth, a mote of dust, perhaps,
Between the gates of hell and heaven trapped;
Caught in the mouth of a breeze,
In one pale beam of light—
And in the night when they get quiet,
dust settles on the floor;
to wait for another breath,
to put usfiid into flight again,
to send us out the door—
adrift amongst the stars once more.

5

Sometimes a stroll just down the street,
where the last flowers grow
A kaleidoscope of patterns,
Mixed in a goldfish bowl:
In a circle down they go,
And back to that long winding road,
On the bank between the stream,
I thought I heard an old man scream:
“Why nod the weary worshipper outside?”
And “T’was the grape!” some shadow cried.

6

Seeing you go down the drain,
Your burial at least;
Don’t worry for a brief reward—
You’ll make it out to Sea.
Memories are written in the sand,
And by sand away,
The Madonna was yours for free;
She wouldn’t stay, he couldn’t leave;
So instead they made a world between:
A ballroom make believe to meet,
so in love, out of their minds,
dance two people of one kind.

7

That angel, my Dear Fantasy,
Miss make believe across the Sea,
Of land that parts like sand.
And, in the ballroom, dancing there,
Not one worry nor a care,
A polonaise hung in the air,
And they together sing, they hum:
My epitaph:
The best is yet to come.

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