Sunday September 20th

A Taste of Melancholy


Sage fingers
trace the lines
where the wind
rushes in
hoping
to bestow magic,
searching for
the reasons
to escape.

Yesterday
breathed goodbye
like a citadel
smoothed by stones
awaiting the return
of a single
green branch.

Turquoise skies
sigh overhead
peering into
tomorrow
like a phantom
wish,
plush and subterranean,
motionless and beckoning
the way a heart
beckons.

A river of doves
call out familiar names
that don't exist
like a column
of wounded
absence.

In these hills
lemon water
spills
like silent tears,
pleading with the wind
like a lonely
pelican.

Distance is not abstract
it defines life,
like an island undiscovered,
and yet when the day
withers and night
reveals its fissures,
eternity
drops its petals
condemning the moon
to be mute.

Shadows of bone
shape this place,
a place where everything
is devoured, eaten
by its own teeth,
regretting yesterdays smile
and frowning upon
the dreamers hand.

Kevin Harling.