The Hope of Spring Weeps

I have broken my mind the arm that writes now in a sling something leaked away onto the sidewalk the wind dropping humble blossoms from cherry trees while I walk home unprepared for rain startled by a flock of juncos shattering into flight at my approach.

I am stripped of pretty pretenses no pain exists from just so word constructions that have dammed up the voice of a child a submerged keening climbing through the trees that have begun to erupt and spread green against a sky that never was controllable.

Paul Winkel

We were Forever Young, our octet, a half century ago.

Spent our nights wandering Gaslight Square, drinking yards of beer at Cantina Chicka, listening to jazz and honky tonk at Frank Moskus’, sang Desolation Row as we passed alleys strewn with broken glass.

Spinning vinyl prayer wheels lifted supplications to our deities. We longed for nothing and were satisfied, joked and talked about the world outside.

But the world grew cold, scourges flayed us. Drugs, suicide, Vietnam, cancer, we fell, one by one.

Face to the wind, watch a setting sun, the dying of the light, the coming of the night.

Paul K. Haeder