Complacent Cocoon
In darkness and deeps there lies calmness and death,
The kind of death that kills the lonely, the grandparents.
This is the death that came to the Irish merladies
Who flicked their reed tails from the green sea sand.
This is the death that comes to girls
Who loved you in their childhoods.
Winter now, frost touches my fingertips each porch morning.
Soon there will be storms to cast the world in glass.
But what I think of while you sleep in my white blanket bed
Is the blue kindled flame that once burned my hands.
What I think of is fall and the fire across the trees
Before their limbs surrender to ice and calm and death.
The kind of death that kills the lonely, the grandparents.
This is the death that came to the Irish merladies
Who flicked their reed tails from the green sea sand.
This is the death that comes to girls
Who loved you in their childhoods.
Winter now, frost touches my fingertips each porch morning.
Soon there will be storms to cast the world in glass.
But what I think of while you sleep in my white blanket bed
Is the blue kindled flame that once burned my hands.
What I think of is fall and the fire across the trees
Before their limbs surrender to ice and calm and death.