Sacred Contracts XXXIII:

'Dead Poet's Society'*

           
I’ve spent too much time               
away from their Holy grounds      
                
Their imagery and metaphors –               
the ones that molded my beliefs               
through a fine point verse               
that didn’t need to be understood               
to be an absolute truth               
                
Sometimes it’s difficult to grant the dead         
an audience when the living demand               
every moment you have to give                 
                
Or when sprinting toward home     
but never reaching its butterflied     
tactics of evasion with your dreams                
                
So, they become unkempt memorials                 
years coating their cracked spines               
with light inhaling the vibrancy               
of their once richly dyed skin               
                
II               
                
Tonight, I inadvertently bumped               
against their epitaph while packing,                 
their shelved cemetery vibrated                 
under the category two imbalance           
                
Trapped in a web of melancholy               
I wiped the dust, adhered as lichen-               
munching to the embedded words               
carved over their stone allegories               
                
I thought about their sacrificial lives               
their masticated ribs between                 
the yellowed teeth of glue                 
slowing pulling them apart                 
from the sternum of their bloom               
casting downward when opened                 
seeds across a hardwood understory        
                
I thought about their hearts                 
vulnerable and exposed in death                 
starving animals vying for remembrance                 
in a dying world too busy to notice               
their once painful existence                 
                
I thought about my life too, and yours               
among these dormant 'Winter Trees'**                 
the perpetual cycle of this lifetime                 
like some 'Handyman'***               
who could never get ahead                 
despite how hard he tried                 
                
III               
                
My weekend bag is packed                 
waiting beside the door               
like a faithful dog                 
there’s gas in my car                 
and he patiently waits         
beside the hearth   
with a meal and warm fire          
        
Yet, I sit unmoved on this floor                 
listening to the dead orate               
in their forgotten tongue             
                
IV                 
                
He'll understand –               
It’s not like I haven’t told him                 
like everyone else                 
there would be times                 
I wouldn’t choose anything                 
over the poetic verse;                 
letters, emails, texts,                 
calls, or pouting silence                 
                
It’s not like I haven’t said                 
I wouldn’t be swayed                 
by bulging zippers               
or swollen suitcases                 
by the door               
yes; including my own           
                
It’s not like I haven’t said,                 
‘If you want to be first                 
in someone’s life                 
you must know                 
it can never be mine.’ ****               
        
V       
              
“It was at that age that poetry                 
came in search of me.”*****                 
saved me from the living               
and fateful beginnings           
              
I am a soul inductee                 
into a 'Dead Poet’s Society'                 
Thus, I pay homage                 
to their skeletal memory               
with the only thing left                 
in this world I fully possess:                 
                
Myself    

            
~                 
              
* 1989 movie title                 
** Winter Trees, Sylvia Plath, published 1971             
*** Handyman, Penelope Mortimer, published 1984             
**** Reference to a former poem entitled "You must know" published 14th July 2016               
***** Pablo Neruda    

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January, 1017