And So Ends Another

And so ends another
in the days of scrapbooks and memories
where I sit and come unglued
and watch the sounds slip
into the deep well of despair
while I watch the end of another…

I will go, I will go
with them as I feel the hands
of time tick tock in slow
rhythm to the staccato
of the footsteps
along the sands of doom.

I will go, I will go
with them and watch
as they dip the light
from one candle to another
- so fragile, so quiet, so isolated -
and tell me it is the passing of hope
while all I can see is the dipping
of the light handled so carefully
lest the wax burns
like the recollections
that haunt the every breath.

I will go, I will go
with them and watch
while far away one too young
for such pain swims
in the tears of acceptance
while her trembling hands
lave the cold corpse
perhaps in hope the love
of those hands can become Jesus
and the death which came
oh so too soon shall acknowledge
the Lazarus of her love.

I will go, I will go
with them and watch
while the thoughts peel
in strips, the flakes
of icy white skin, the cool
alabaster of pain,
which falls in snow at the feet
and with these thoughts I shall take
the candle when it is offered
and hope in its gleam
that one time, one more time,
one last time,
my mind shall explode

and again I will know youth
running laughing
across the fields bathed
in the golden sunlight
of innocence and when I call
her name Love shall caress
with a moment of unquestioned devotion

but I know, but I know, instead
that I am merely left with the fading
of the photographs and the words
that sear in dark husks
across the pages when I return
to read them one by
one and realize

that it is the same, that it is
always the same, if I go,
if I go with them and watch,
or if I stay, if I stay, and talk
to these walls that perhaps
are the only ones
who truly know my name

in the days of scrapbooks and memories
where I sit and come unglued
and watch the sounds slip
into the deep well of despair
while I watch the end of another…

For now I truly at last realize
by the shadow of this window
that in the end of all seasons
the lantern you have placed upon
the windowsill is the light,
could perhaps be the only light,
to ever again illuminate the tired steps
of my weary journey
home to the happy alley
where I await for you
in your white sleeves of the longest
imagination that shall teach me once
more how one can commit
to memory each feather, each
thought, each note of the gathering
of the sparrows that watch

from a far distance before
they arise into the chorus of their flight

as the sun sets upon the evening
of an old year and greets
the swaddled clothing
of the morning of a new one…