ashes to ashes

The day is cold and gray, a stray wind rushes to find me  outside, smoking away the minutes. The final collapse of any pretense, all these names and insignia collapse while I draw and fume. The lesson of transition as ember  turns to ashes, the fleeting fire always orphans anything left of the fuel. The lesson as submission as yet another addiction sheds my last pretense. The lesson of solitude, all my life spent learning to be alone. Smoke only rises when something is burning down.

How dull I am to miss the moment of winter where the birds start courting. What a fool I was to think one season ever holds more than a day. Love is here, love is gone, you wake from the dream forgetting. All the words are true, given the right address. Every moment spread out loud, from the bottom of the ocean to the edge of the declared atmosphere, something bound to land right. Something ought to ring true. An icy wind adjusts my thinking. I grow slow and bitter, shed of my last bright spark.

In the end I must stop counting. Every poem I write a promise broken. Every rise I climb a fresh look at the precipice. The lesson of attachment learned as the ligaments tear loose. The lesson of diminished returns returns again and again. In the end I must extinguish the last ember, no-one left here who will use this flame. The coil of smoke crawling through the dying sunlight, pine limbs swaying so slightly, biding these stories of snakes and fruit, these tales of moral order and courtly ardor. The lesson of fire only that you will burn.