careful what you say
it will haunt
and when it haunts, interrupts
I don't want to be interrupted
I've lost too much

I cast a backward look—how the times changed

To the beautiful face in the stroller
She Smile, I smiled, the guardian frown
A child is not born to hate
Hate is taught:
Hate is the new formula in their supplements
home is where it multiply so easily:
Let not occupy kinship bias
Defused the bigots:
Save our innocent children:
No child is born to hate;
~~~~
*World's Wit and Wisdom
Children have never been good at
listening to their elders, but they
have never failed to imitate them.
James Baldwin, 1924 - 1987

when you departed
I found a new world
one of undying silence
and an alien language
without anyone to speak it to
I thought I knew of grief
And the depths
of my gothic sea
I didn't know
when you departed
I died
so did my words
and the atoms of me
The sea swallowed me whole
all I can see is a widening bruise
on some strange body
I can't recognise
and the careful managing of
sorrow strung of denial and disbelief
I can hear the humming of
the dirge of my heart's demise
The soil of overcome
balanced on the very edge of everything
My hands shake
The will to be is
the silence and the ache
is buried so deep with me
it will take years to separate me
from my mildewed heart.

I still walk down that path
My hands still find themselves tracing the edges of turned pages
of a dusty book
I still drag my feet along the wasteland
And the edge, always the edge
The dirge has faded
The anger lulled
Neither sorrow nor regret
Just being
I know not why my bones find themselves
Gazing in the centre of nothing.

Trapped in a cage with golden bars of light
Of ancient habit and direful duties;
Below the water crashed into the bight,
The whispering waves baiting with beauties.

But her shadow lurked around the coast,
Dashing her to the beach like drifting wood.
Preventing her from what she wanted the most
To reach new shores from where she stood.

She wanted to travel and sail the open sea
Beyond the shingle, seaweed and shells
Closer to the horizon where the birds flew free
Or to the arenaceous ground in diving bells.

And coming back to where she started
She found her seaside changed since she has parted.
Or did the widening horizon change her perceiving?
For returning was not the same as never leaving.