Think not that breezy replies are our epitaph

Airy words, full of froth, do not finalize
So much as mitigate

Questions disassemble tensions
When the answers are drafted in the clouds;
When the sound of the response
Seems to rise up from the bottom of an
Empty barrel

I answered you with the words
Of someone who has become conscious
Of all the road signs. Who now slows down
At the yellow lights. Who thinks before
He leaps.

And yes, I wonder why such wisdom was not
Visited upon the younger me. But then, had it been,
You might not have found me worth
The nightly conversations which stoked
Us often until the orange sunrise.

I am well aware of our circumstances:
Your fortune, and my travail
And I respect the boundaries
We had to paint on the landscape
We used to call our own

But let not distance or Redi-Whipped
Sentences let you believe
You have somehow become an afterthought.
That would be a sin no thousand prayers
Of mine could ever forgive.

And of all the things you were and are
To me, a sin was never among them.

10/01/2014

Posted on 10/01/2014
Copyright © 2025 Ken Harnisch