Winter Solstice

Winter solstice, the earth open wide With a heart crushed like footsteps in snow (((fictitious persons disclaimers implied To all listening from rooftops below))) It had rained and the air was like perfume outside As the sky changed We began when the ground was still dry Planting vineyards where vineyards don’t grow Shaping cypress with pitch on both sides For the nights when our trumpets won’t blow That regret still there circling like vultures inside As your face changed? They don’t stay inside (there but for Thy grace go I...) Through the eyes of machines, immaculate scenes That had already passed me by All the stars on the ground, Noah’s ark in the clouds Set sail in the flood of my mind The other animals drowned in blasphemous towns And asked as they passed me by: “was to do as I please a European disease?” Winter solstice, the earth had closed down So with breastplates of righteousness low Searched for streams in the caves underground Where the Baptists and bootleggers go And you smile but your vampire complexion still shows And your past shows It’s really all that shows (so often unrecognizably so) Through the eyes of machines viewed immaculate scenes That had already passed me by All the stars on the ground, Noah’s ark in the clouds But the thought in the back of my mind: “does my misery feed a metaphysical need That’s long since passed me by Neither reasoning why Nor offering reply?” Dear my newlywed wife You’re not the love of my life It had already passed me by--- Finally grasping the line Casting pearls before swine?