New Poem

 Lament for Eden

You faded the other day,
like light in Eire’s west,
retiring from beating time,
sun and sweat, closing in shutters
making a mess of bed clothes.

These were the bookshelves we left
unorganized, the tattooed skin I
couldn’t interpret, absent-minded that
I was back then.

I was innocent of it, nursing
grief wounds that came
unhealed, scabrous in time,
that you had helped sew up
lick clean, dress in
silk covering.

And how playful we were, naked,
unashamed, frolicking through
meadows, melodious, without care
for cuts a branch bramble
would give to those not
heeding.

I fell too easily then, coarse
feet against night air and
grass stain; that the trick
mirror had revealed all
was worsened from wear.

As your form turned void,
shapeless then unholy, I wept:

thinking of how we would never
again be so close to our
Garden, always so distant
from Grace, in glass highways

endless stone arches.