The seasons would not heal his wants
nor hush his frail asperity;
recluse in all his childhood haunts
he quailed before eternity.
Harsh-eyed he prayed in words unknown
for worlds of promise, free from pain,
where sower turns to what is sown,
in time, beneath an autumn rain.
The seed, he said, to soil reverts,
its passage as a tree forgot;
so man’s bones break, and all his hurts
so swiftly fly, so soon are not.
Such thoughts destroyed him – pity, too:
for they are no less false than true.
© Mike Bond 2012
First published in Poetalk, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition
