an Ode to a Morning Lark

dedicated to my longtime, elder comrade Aaron Ashurst

Seated here at this coffee-house booth. healthy confident couple next one over. a tiny girl with shiny strawberry hair. Such a wondrous manifestation of Gaiia's patient, vital forces of revival!!

(i drink an excess cup with emotions disrupted and scorpion-scarred.)

Her pale sky-blue eyes twinkle as she pecks bits of blackberry scone off her mom's fingers.

No, blessed and poised Southern babe,
I'm not envious. Never!:
only too happy in thy virgin happiness.

See, blackberries aren't meant for me anymore,
(my mind so long unmoored!$!)
This,
to you a warm Southland and port of happy departure,
is for me a melancholy and sprawling
Ground Zero.
Only a little happiness is brought to me
by the lilting 20s jazz drifting across the grey carpet,
or by this great canvas cleverly splattered
with yellows, greens, blues, and colors sin nombre

Now you're gone and i'm Glad
for from these eyes flow tears I wouldn't have you see,
little Sierra.
for they know too well they'll Never again sparkle
as do thine!
for they've seen the gaunt Celtic farmer
swinging his hoe against the genocidal potatoe famine,
and seen wave after wave of gallant Gaulic youth
crash gorily against the Greedy roman phallanx.

but fare well! heart-felt blessings!

My way is polar. opposed.
my glorious possibilities
but a single Guiding! star
to rally my mind and hand
against this seeming endless night
of grasping, hard-hearted doom.