Painting by Bev Jackson
Still Life with Sorrow
Our bodies are made of grief,
decaying leaves, broken blossoms,
torn webs that glisten after rain.And those rains scatter heirloom seeds
across debris of felled maple trees, over
the rusted train car forever stopped in its tracks.How wishes are wheat-back pennies, cats snoozing
in small pools of sun, the quietude between songs.How water and hope are time's prosecutions,
the heart nothing more than a sublime notion.What you say and what you do in a day
are conflicting versions of carbon-based life.How the stars are us
before we burned.
