poetry

An Embrace

/ Aphelia / 1 Comment

Long held
Estimates
Suggest
Our star,
In main
sequence,
Will burn
For another
Five billion
Years.
And at that time,
A roiling
Ember,
Swollen from
Firesworn
Devouring
Of elements
It will
Embrace
The last trace
Of us,
The dust that
Knit the lattice
Of our form,
And welcome
Us home.

An Epitaph

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Will the earth

With my bones

Swallowed

Find the marrow

Lacks?

Will the grey

Veined clay

Gather in the

Defects?

Will the stones

Laugh?

Carried in the water

In rivulets

With the weight of

Evaporated eons.

In red, roaring wastes,

Will the water wait?

Carving earth in

Mountain and canyon,

What will it make

Of the hollow things that

Once held this shape?

When scattered

Will I finally

Be lovely?

Will I finally be

Comely when

Rearranged?

A promise

Like feathers,

Like lead

Cradled in

The trembling

Of existence.

The ache

Burrowed

And silenced

In silt.

MJGS 3/2/22

Aggregate

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Moss covered stone

Sun beckoned

The snow runs off,

Stays in shadow.

Petrichor and

Woodsmoke.

Its said to

Follow beauty,

But forgets.

Swift water flows,

Slows at the bend

In the middle frozen

Hand outstretched

Hard pack and

Hardpan

Veins of quartz

Veins of clay

Dust and ash

Pockmarked with

Grinding rock

Laden and vacant

A thousand years.

Shot rock

In granite

In agate

In aggregate.

Pine needles

In a panic.

Wind summoned.

The sun sets

And fills pockets

Valleys

Inlets

Seethes against

Mountainside.

Long strides

And echo

Against cliff face.

Falling and fallen

Pebbles and ember.

Oxygen fed and

Carbon starved

Stars burn and

Scatter

Then

Burrow

Nestle

Soften the

Darkness.

Third of June comes too soon.

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There are eighteen
Between you and I,
Times around an
Unflinching sun.
In that time stung
With cat o’ nine tails,
I have been in love twice,
And three human beings
Brought through me.
Baby’s breath
from a funeral wreath
In a vase by the sink.
Baby teeth from
A boy who looks
Just like me.
In summer’s insistent
Crematory,
You would hate to
Spectate silently
While my worlds end.
And If your bones could weep,
If they could bleed
Or fight, or if you could
Throw yourself
Again into the fire,
You would,
To save me from
The Moirai.
Six thousand five
Hundred and seventy days
Since your heart
Gave out and
I’ve been
Pinned against
The indifferent earth,
Having forgotten
The gravity
In your voice
The last time you
Said you loved me.
Weak force
Fighting
Weak force.

A Dirge for the Barely There

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You were more than
A trail of blood,
More than the fires
That forged the iron in it.
Weak gravity
And heavy elements.
Eons in the æther
Before you came to me.
You were more than
These filaments,
Proton and electron
And the atoms they knit,
And in that great
Undying place,
Where we will not
Be created nor destroyed,
May we one day collide
And know we knew
And shared
The same space,
Though you were barely there
And I only just.

-MJG 2021

Empty and desolate is the sea.

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I buried you

In the marrow

Of my bones.

I carry you

In this wreckage.

This derelict

Body full of

Curses and portents,

Salted wounds and

Blood in the water,

Tall ships on

Strange shores.

Satellites in

Perpetual free fall

Following stars

Named for

Blasphemed

Gods,

All their supplicants

And temples

Long since consumed

By fire

Or by moorland

Drowned

And exhumed

A cuneiform adorned

Tomb

-MJG 2021