thinking of beauty, its
recollection mining the tunnels of memory
you will likely spend your dotage
reliving a misspent youth
teaching your bones to ache
now you over-salt your stews
each missing tooth tells
its own tale of neglect
that long search for meaning
had drifted like a whiff of something
through the reeds, the red-winged blackbird
chirping her hints, the deer fly the
cattail down snagged on a fallen honey locust
the dry chuckle of leaf litter underfoot
you spent the bulk of it in cities
trapped in that concrete condom
where face muscles fight
against their own worried smiles
flashing below those void eyes
like the parched easement
of a dry spell oystershell
bitter in its own happy way
round pegs in square graves
one foot already in when
her cervix dilated and you
didn’t even have a name
but your first utterance
was plaintive, and loud
Written with the above pictured ephemera as a prompt.