Saddness

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It’s always there
Sadness
Waiting
In the psalm of morning
In the bustle of the afternoon
In the cerulean serenity of evening
Like the soldiers
In the trenches of Somme
Eavesdropping on no man’s land
Gripping their rifles
Like nursery blankets
Silently reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

It lives beneath the speckled earth
In the rumble of dreams
The prelude of rain
The epitaph of a teenage kiss
The epilogue of regret
In the songs that turn your heart
Into mortar and pestle dust.

And it’s engraved in the faces of the forgotten
Who live in the exile of pictures
Behind the longhand of fragile boxes
That was written in the calligraphy of my mom
Who knew
As a tortured child
That she had to warn me
Of what lay ahead.
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