post-mortem

 

post-mortem 

on the scent of a promised flower

of a summer we may yet live to see

in the depth of a meadow’s bower 

may you lay down low against me

and embrace the moment foretold 

when to foretell was a difficult taste

to bake in an oven stone cold

a virus that was spreading in haste

and in this downing of days

down all of the reasoning of ways

lay no hope at the feet

than a bedraggled shroud sheet

that we will greet hand in hand

at the boundary of the boundary

of a promise promised land 

social distanced deemed never to meet

for enough was never said 

that they (it’s always they)

would understand the way

that the virus is caught and is spread

far and wide and woe betide

the oxygen of yesterday

will run out today

and force the old songs that we deride

tip all the faith of youth

over the precipice 

of a perception 

that such an island uncouth

in a bravado of youth

is not an interesting notation

except to the bloody fuddy duddies 

that are not a worthy foundation

for tomorrow is a new world

and what was culled was not

anything essential but

at best irreverential

and to beholden as ‘them olden of days’

at the 2020 - 2021 boundary

when the virus was retooled 

as a reaper of the unwary fool

the corollary of yesterday

being the repentance of today

the corollary of today being

that which is now lost

never to be found

remember 

never 

is a word oft repeated

but rarely understood