watching | The Sound of What Happens

Stars fall
And fall
I could do nothing
But watch stars fall

Brilliant sparks of soaring light
Lost in a senseless sea of sorrow
Tears cried too late
Then too soon dried

There was no time
To gather the fractured shards of love
Hold them close
Keen their crossing

Run, the shadows
Will snuff out in an inky smoke
The tiny incandescent suns
Smoldering in your harried, haunted eyes

Does the earth over your heads lie cold
Is it not yet satiated
With enough red rain
No time, I slip

Over the black pools
Lying in wait
Like withered, sunken eyes
Acrid reservoirs of unwept tears

Don’t fall…
But silently, filling
Hollows with the horrors of memory
A steady rain

Perhaps tomorrow
The warm sunshine
And the call of the curlew
Will pull me back

From the endless depths
Of yesterday’s neglected grief
But at last, today I weep
And weep for fallen stars

Bright sun dances on the road
Ahead a mother and child

Such a strange cry the child makes
Low and hushed as if he dare not
Teadering on the threshold of silence

Mama, don’t leave me alone
Don’t leave me alone mama

Mama don’t
Leave me alone, mama don’t
Leave me.

Over and over in broken echo
Mama says you don’t want to come with me?

Mama says there will be no watching later.
Child cries hesitate before droning on without conviction

No more watching. Does she mean the child,
Nno watching the child
Cries, child’s echoing cries over, over

Three times I stopped along my way and turned
Three times wondering, hoping to do more
Three times I looked back, knowing I couldn’t see

And I could never be sure, no sure thing
Surely it is nothing, no thing except such a strange cry the child makes

One final time to turn to them
Mother and child, send love to them
Love the child, and would he recognize it,

Mother’s love for a child
One eternal moment I love the child
I walk home

I move on, walk the fading cries of a child
Dissipating fragments on the wind
Echos breaking.

The Sound of What Happens