Orpheus After the War

Orpheus After the War

Orpheus after the War was
a thought upon the Beach,
A veteran with a dispense and a reach
In reminiscence. Love is gone.

If there were no war,
Milk would drift down your song book,
Lifted from sweet grass
And inhaled
Under the dandelion sky.

Our early March was
A snowflake under an evergreen
aching backwards
And arcing sideways;

You moved like glue
On a window screen.

Where can I go now
But to the memory of
A driftwood beach
And this comfort of ink?

In the forest of a thousand trails,
the tree of the Unconscious shelters the goddess,
Kneeled in a psalm kennel of adrenalin.
Water and foam move over the shoreline
And inhale the roots of wood
And leaves of arms, corpse songs now among
Vibrations: the sound of the ocean.

That din is the lonely
Hum on this crowded
Waterfront. The sky is birds
And gasoline,
The city but crowds
And magnetic density,
The water some eternity
Disguised as affectation by
A shelter and can
of hot dog soup
Disguised as home.

Mark Brunke

Posted over on Poets Against The War