The Man in the Cabin
You cannot understand this world.
For all the wonder and wealth it provides,
it’s deeply incriminated in the death of family members.
You need a pill to sleep, another to awaken.
You find more value in observing
than immersing yourself in the lives of other people.
And time spent in that cabin in the woods
is your purest form of absence.
Too many kin have passed.
The days have nothing to do
but groom the living for the end.
Tenure is too short for the tender.
How can there be peace when time is a nor’easter.
Or satisfaction when kindness is so thin and scrawny.
The diary you keep is full of frozen words.
You reread and the chill off the page is intense.
Today, the news of your brother’s death
crowds and clouds the shaky entry with tears.
Truth is, you have not put down a happy thought in years.
And the empty mailbox is garbed in a shroud.
The lilac bush is as dead as a squashed spider.
There is no fellowship, just residency.
You trust your car more than you do another soul.
You keep your grave clean at least.
It watches you scratch your sores,
dine out on the obituaries’ poison.
True, you have tombstones on the brain.
And your own death is way overdue.
The field is thinning
of those who’ll send a wreath.
Author: John Grey
0 Comments