REMAINS

Above the encircling dark
shadows of noon,
I read rain clouds in the
droplets of sightless eyes
seeking earth's wrinkled skin,
yearning to commune with
figurines, lacking in silence.

The lonely leafstalk
holding hope to its droppings
when storms rage against
its ripest fruits: epitaph to
sweats, burned out on clearing…
trail my mop-stick raised
against the profusions of sky.

The chartless creeks
meeting streets of rivers,
sealed the unseeing periwinkles.
I stand drenched, a witness.

And like the habitat-less crab,
a muddied soul
lacking the warmth of sunlight
like autumn leaves.

I, too, lay drowning
waiting to drink potion
from broken sewage,
out of turn, before becoming
like the other remains, the human
jetsam, sprawling everywhere…
waiting to assume spooked

lives when the poet's
borrowed tongue
speaks of truth and of hope.
Above the watery shadows
keeping company with eyeless
figurines, I see now awaited
dreams on mud-cushioned streets.

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