Fade To Umber

I

Calculus in detritus;
sediment under waning tide,
cavernous and void of light --
upward eyes these still ride.
I am sunk within your deep
rivulets of sentiment steeped;
swirling around a constant murmur,
fomenting in this rudiment.
Ever furthur into clay
sublimate of irony loam;
every fibre pulls me close
untoward your centre comb.

II

Photos dry around the edges,
memories of earliest home;
caught within the many layers
fading with its Kodachrome.
Now gone I wither furthur;
disintegrating patchwork seams
sewn between the blank spaces --
photos become to which I convene.
Heavy volumes, endless pages
each a fervent point in time;
linearly the story rises
that was us at once sublime.

III

Framed in ornate lattice gilded,
now antiqued in its array --
show me now what I have become
from where we were in history.
I sink to find a watershed
as endings rise to cloak my lament;
captured will I die with you
inside the testament of each moment.
In which sat with us a piece,
chalky outline drawn before
as mists collude the ghostly form;
I within and all of us converge here
in turbiditiy's commune.

IV

We laugh and broadly smile
among the flat images
of those long departed --
scattered pages leafing on,
flipping yellowed and barely hanging on.
I remember the old golden ones
whose look shined upon my young face --
they became at last liquid souls
merging into another grace.
Fallen now the giving heart
soars in dreams becoming a part
of what was and slipping us by
yet never asking to forget or why.

V

You, my friend are all but gone;
Mother, Father and moving on
still in photos once I took
when we were still an open book.
Heavy volumes epic and alive
still beckon us to gather revive
remnants of what we still remember
and whatever else we'd not rather.
Losing form our faces blurr
as time blows past and we concur
with hosts of heaven looking on,
so it goes the endless song.

VI

Sung so dear to my deepest heart
and held so near my will imparts
you and all your remnants bare
burned down to dust as we might share
the bittersweet yet vague elixir
seeping from our heart's afflictions
tainted with the blood of assurance
that wounds heal to cover remembrance --
and destined from these parcels learn
what goes by may not return
but will linger on in aches
dragging each piece our longings make.

VII

I knew you when tender boughs
on whose branch I rest not now
or ever will lest it might break as
dried a hollow undernourished will makes --
greenhorn once it now is grey;
brittle fragile in its slow decay
that was our love in its unity
but know not now whence it may be.
Always here or forever gone,
fading it ebbs the story long;
redundant it tries to carry on
us, within its heaviest prong.

VIII

They rest in shadows and they move,
painstaking the ones whose photos curl
to crack reproven and so we do
face the music as our record does too --
slow to an unrecognizable pitch,
and grind to a halt our immovable hitch;
in union we reach for the distant past
and in so doing mull o'er time's repast.
You carried me, I carry you
as heavy you seem I need yet to do
all the things we did and tried to send
again come alive our hearts to mend.

IX

How to repair we know not why
our every word still hears no reply --
all we knew still carries on while
all that grew was not made strong.
The balm of truth cannot be applied,
so we never cease to deny
anything these facts could derive
and in this way we cannot die.
Immortal we become at last
a book inscribed with all gone past
if we cannot the testament recall
finally its pictorial will remind us all.

X

Burned in pages black and white --
youthful sages enwrapped in light;
now the ghosts look on and sigh
as we know not the need to try.
Love was easy when times were free --
olden words drift from beyond me;
flowing now, I see you there
as memory serves its heed to impair.
The heart once torn sears on infernal;
love once burned finds hope eternal
as fate resumes its deepest slumber--
a sinking pit; its fade to umber.

                     .......