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, merrily chirping Southern babe,
I'm not envious. never!:
but too happy in thy virgin happiness

See, blackberries aren't meant
or sweet for me anymore,
(my body diseased,
my mind long unmoored!$!)

Though we share these festive moments
in this warm Southland of your happy departure,
soon it will again seem to me
but a melancholy and sprawling...
Ground Zero.

Only consolation 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
like yours,
for they have seen the gaunt Celtic farmer
swinging his hoe against the genocidal potatoe famine,
seen wave after wave of gallant Gaulic manhood
crash gorily against the merchantile roman phallanx,
and malevolent blizzards
after which even the most glorious Spring
is not fully spring.

but fare well! heart-felt blessings!

My way is polar, opposed. :

the once Apollian light of my bardic possibilities
is now but a single guiding star
to rally my mind and hand
against the seeming endless waves
of grasping, cold-hearted doom!