He is in the wood when the rain starts;
in the thicket of cedar and oak.
The titter and prattle resounds off the creek
like the morose laughter of estranged brothers
come together to mourn. The trees supplicate
and bend like shy girls.
He is ankle deep in the cold water
when the rain begins to fall,
sounding more, actually, like icicles
imploding upon glass.
The languorous basilica of summer
slowly denudes. It does not senesce
with a gnash and wail; the trees open
to death in resolute splendor. Dying,
his father once told him,
is nothing to fear. It is nothing more
than a necessary emptiness against which
one weighs abundance.
As a boy, he found arrowheads in this creek,
flint and obsidian smoothed and
impotent with time.
The old man went into the void howling,
naked and gaunt, sobbing spittle
onto his wife.
The walls of the verdant cathedral fracture,
pierced through.
He walks softly into the barren vault of night.