Passing Beyond
The Perimeter
Where The City Heaps Its Dead
On Out To Those Tamer Lands
Where Ancestors
Lie Quiet Still
And Where Even The Living
Thrive Only To Die All Day
There Ivy Has Topped
A Grand Abandoned House
Whose Once All Seeing Eyes
Are Now Thoroughly Blind
There An Ornate Bridge
Luminous Cream
As If In A Dream
Leads Nowhere
Yet
A Grey Heron Waits
Tense In Its Arch
Poised To Pierce
Ill Fated
River-Borne Life
Beyond A Shapeless Frame
Of Darkening Trees
Sunlit Fields Unfold
Perhaps The Closest Thing
To Heaven
We May Ever Know
Love Lies All Around Here
Inscribed And Tied
Laid Out
In Gaily Contrived
Glades And Gardens
Littered With Glitter
And Multicoloured Windmills
Reminding All But Children
Of Our Ultimate Folly
Flat Stones
Are Ranked
Their Shoulders All Forlorn
And Sadness Shaped
Dressed In Death’s Drab Code
Prepared For An Eternal Cold
Each Is Raised And Levelled
With Accurate Tools
Some Even Assured
With Shuttered Concrete
Yet All Will Be
Inexorably Disturbed
By The Glacial,
Gentle Breathing
Of Time
And The Silent
Yet Restless Land
Barefoot Between The Rows
We Step On
Beaches Of Green Mourning
Cobwebs Breaking
On Our Naked Shins
Fallen Fruit
Crushing Under
Our Tensile Skin