"What Lasts."
So help me love you and die.
Paper into pulp and our words last as ashes to cool the sun.
The pen lasts in stories by the fire,
the ink bubbles, the word is cremated,
and spreads dumbly as in our lungs
I wanted to speak it now, and how
the explosive sound of the lungs collapsing as they give back
air.
We have had that energy burning, we
have been at the throat of the world, we have had a lifetime.
I concede to that blue flower, the sky and more
than passing moral guidance.
Because light flashes, dies, flashes,
some sing the rhapsody of the liver.
Yet what the symbol is to the flower, the flower
itself is to something or other.