And I Was Witness To You
of leaves falling in the wind
i can taste them
in my eyes and nose and mouth and skin and hair and ears
they look rusted out like 1950s cars
in the yard
that once carried a familys to church is
flaky and rough
dry and brittle
i smell a bitter living
like the 1940s people
always sitting and their folds
flatten on whatever surface they recline with and
their face wrinkled forgot how to smile even though
it is self evident that smiles once rained down from these faces they
are now something like a mole in a lake, its paws are dull and
long and scooped and
its muscles are knotted
and tense and ready to dig
but the mole has forgotten dig
and forgotten dirt
it is out of its element
in the water
drifting
out of our reach
we do not reach
my skin hums with the alternating currents
like days and nights and breeze can whipped up wind
and still severe cold that snaps the skin
when something small hits you.
in it is the emptiness of lifeless leaves,
husks of green flexible substantial little lurching reversed lamp shades,
they brush against my shins
with the wind and
with the weight that only becomes from that which is dead.
even holding his hand when he died felt heavier so i let it go it wasn’t him it was too heavy to be him it was too lifeless like these leaves like these leaves like these
my hair simple
tosses and turns and tells of a path unknown to us that the
weary rusty travelers
skip and
step
along
until late snows rot them still into the earth’s crustly surface
and i hear it go away, i’ll hear you again, your whisper in the wind,
you who give voice to the breeze.
you’ll come again, not
you but you,
kinda like i mean men who march to merry war but never come back but more march another month from now and i see their green coveralls that sound and smell and see
like these dead leaves
you may never return
but
i have seen you smelt you sensed you
and now that can never change that is eternal that you were and i was witness to you
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