I remember madmen shaking dead geraniums
Moments before and after, then ghosts
Moving in, picking over old wounds and dust
And wondered what there was to cherish.

Surely we cherish love, however little
And all that that holds dear?
Keeping it all in the head and heart
For as long as possible. Let me please be loved.

Then came the image of water, calm and still
And a lake and peering into its mirror
Feeling blows disguised on a forgetting curve
All whistling in the wind.

Neither the most cherished nor a preference
Just broadsides from birth to death
As we, clambering through the dense sharp briars
Toward the one, the special one, lying deep in the mind.

Arrivals and departures, fragments of a
Message echoing, to endure and to be loved.
That was it. Now I know. Now I can go.
As memory slips the tired traces of the mind.