Baby Steps

The last blue heron has flown away,
winter storms ravage uprooted trees,
quashing birch and poplar,
bent over like fallen soldiers at Gallipoli,
wounded limbs with few green leaves reach for the sun.

A graveyard of detritus
washed ashore in rising tides,
blue and silver Schooner cans,
amber Moosehead bottles,
emerald Mountain Dew,
scattered plastic coffee covers,
look like poison amanita caps,
sun-blanched logs,
escaped from clear cutting,
reflect a luminous
white sheen, like bald heads
on Ped-Onc ward.

A stagnant Saragasso sea,
a clogged septic morass
floats with brown Sargassum
and aquamarine Cladaphora
toxic waters barely ripple,
tremoulous as an octagenarian
hooked to a monitor
a clicking cacophony
of discordant rhythym
a lamentable dirge.

Life ebbs away in baby steps.
Heinous crimes go unreported.
Make it better, make it better!
Longing for a mother's kiss
cold compress on a febrile brow.

Fatalistic Nostradomas
trusted stars to let him know
a door might be left ajar.