Lifeless Visions

In the middle of the road

Where the asphalt runs thick

And spring heat liquefies the nearby air

Lies a bird.

It’s yellow and red

Now a lifeless vision.

—

There are many troubling questions.

How far did he fly?

Is this his native land?

Where do you bury a migratory bird?–

Should I fly down to Guatemala?

Or offer it, in some secluded spot,

To the vultures?

—

But I scrape it off the road,

Remove it from the sticky profanity

And rub away some dirt

From a secluded spot,

A place resonant with dignity–

Affirming our’s as well–

Cover it with twigs and mulch,

And whisper an apology.

—

How many bright visions

Lie lifeless on our roads?

Let us tend, then,

To our unburied dead.

Past and Future Feeling

Walking through campus

Communing with memories

Like overhearing intimate conversations.

Much easier

Than the attention

The present demands.

Lulled into a

Soft timelenssness

Blessed as much

By what I can’t remember

As what I can.

The buildings

And landscape

Have a commonplace holiness about them

Memory’s physical evidence.

The existence of all feeling

Evidently lives on.

Each student

Embodying various emotions

Versions of which

Have all been felt before.

And will be felt again.

Not a tired emulation

But an endless springing

Emotions embodied

Over and over

Alchemized in new

And beautiful combinations.

Every emotional state

I’ve lived here

Lives on here.

The overwhelming stress

Flattening self-consciousness

Awkward nervousness

Grim satisfaction

End-of-semester catharsis

And more.

It’s all still here.

Which is comforting

In a way difficult to explain.

The wheels of emotion

May turn us

And weary us

But we can’t weary it.

And the world

Never wearies of it

Or us.

Isn’t this some form of immortality?