Chosen in Crowtime
“The beautiful is not the chosen.
The chosen become beautiful.”
The Cowboy Junkies
Wisps and streamers of cirrus
artfully streak
the high china blue—
The black eyed sunflowers
riot in Van Gogh hues
across this watercolor landscape—
The green leaves of cottonwood
and scrub oak
subside, differentially, to lime
and pale jade, the green fuse lit,
slow lambent smolder
soon to ignite the holocaust
at the end of crowtime,
the full bloom of fall.
The hard whispers of the chosen
shake down summer,
tinge wild blue with headache,
nag down the long bones of poets
rheumatic penny whistle lamentations
committing sins of attrition
and long division.
The chosen shuffle,
like fallen leaves
in a fitful breeze, a flicker
in the eye, a shudder
in the penumbral kinescope,
replaying other deaths and funerals.
To say you lived
is to say we loved.
Now bygones be gone, and we still live.
