Lynn White

One Last Time

Before the trees begin to fall

I’ll take a walk

through the woods

one last time,

hear the leaves glistening

and shaking

in fear of what is to come

some are already fallen

lying

dying,

it’s the season for it

after all.

I’ll see the light shining 

lighting on the leaves of grass

that push soft spikes of green life 

in between the fallen

see the light shining 

through the trees

one last time.

It lights up the white crosses

chalked on the trunks

as it passes by

too many white crosses 

all ready

to mark the graves

of the fallen.

It’s the season for it

after all,

always the season for it

one more time.

Endlessly Rocking Whitman Anthology, 2019

Skull

The skull lies desolate

on the bare mountain side.

Just lies there among the rocks. 

Lies still with a few accompanying bones.

Each day it decays as wind and rain weather it

and destroys its form and substance so that it wastes 

away and fades into the landscape and decays.

If it had come to rest lower down the mountain

it would have sunk into the grass and leaves

and risen with hair and hide intact with,

the cause of death discernible, with

its last meal of grass or rabbit

still there inside its stomach.

Preserved by nature.

Preserved or wasted.

It all depends on

where you 

fall.

First published in With Painted Words, August 2016

Running On Empty 

We take care how we fill our shoes.

Our trainers and boots.

Our flats and heels, stilettos and cuban.

They may match our mood, specially chosen,

or be eternal representations of our unified self.

So surely something of us must remain

when they are emptied.

Not just our smells and mis-shapes,

evocative as they are,

but something more fundamental.

Something spiritual.

Something symbolic.

See here

empty shoes

laid out tidily in rows.

Blocked together in the leaves and grass

or concrete yard.

Rows upon rows of them

that once contained the school children

now shot dead,

our children.

See here

empty shoes

piled high in untidy heaps.

Heaps and heaps of them, 

that once contained peaceful people

now massacred, bombed, burned.

Our people

spanning place

and time without end.

First published in Tuck, June 2018