POEM: To The Slaughter

The terror of a sliding down life
Is the fear of a diminished heart.
It lifts and falls in muted movement
Like November clouds straining sun.
The hard, red stone that is my heart
Counts seconds as a reflex
That is want, ticking off the great suck
That are our most frantic dreams
Like running in water, or losing all our teeth.

Though. . .

I remember love
I know beauty
For these things sing in me
When I can recognize the tune.

But strong is your hold on me, immortal guest,
Fearful is the gravity of your mass.
The lamb offers her blinding white fleece
To the omnipresent future of the bloody vest.
My overcast spirit shuffles off to the slaughter
Where all of me is buried hard and deep
For the next lambing year,
Where everything is reticent and held at bay,
My God, my God – how again will sun ever recognize the day?