The moon’s belly hangs low, scraping glass cliffs and the leaf-wreathed wind softly strokes the pregnant, pockmarked skin. Read the entrails in the maria and conjugal craters: This is his face. Is this his face? I’d ask the stars but they’ve been swallowed whole by the glare of human genius. Once again we have tamed; we have subdued; we have conquered and flown our revolutionary flag. But tonight’s anthem is orchestrated not with trumpets or with flute and snare or violin virtuoso; tonight is for the trees. Read their lips as they chafe spine to spine, leafy crickets with peeling skin and too many memories… fitting on such a night. Fitting too that the moon carries low, edging into the third trimester with an inkling labor will come too soon. As in death, in life. Tomorrow a child will receive a handful of sweets and brush dead foliage from above a dead stone, and in his own way, he will know and hear that anthem. They always know. Skin browned by sun and leaves browned by our annual demise, they speak the same language, that of trees and wind and the enceinte moon and the spirit that yearns to break free of brown. I read the words on his lips as he swallows sugar and tradition, and wraps his tongue around those mysteries which are always so simple for the mind untouched by transience, and I recognize a phrase here and there, struggle with a connotation, forget my grammar lessons and attempt to recall them before that window opens and blows my leaves to chaos. I am left searching for stars, doubting their longevity, listening to that brown-skinned child mumble the stories of heroes enthroned in earth and entombed in sky without a care, wondering at the sudden need to coat my lips and kiss the red back into dead leaves.
[all right... so this was written originally in a free verse format, with line breaks, etc; I rather like this form because of how it emphasizes the words themselves rather than the patterns they're forced into, but I'm not sure how it works without the natural pauses and inflections that line breaks grant. help?][/b]
