First Father

Do you remember when I said

You’d never feel the sting of death?

But now I’m waiting where you left

Beside that snow-kissed clearing

I pressed a seed through that frozen fleece

The earth embraced you in the ground

No invention of my mind will ever compose

A melody so profound

I’m a priest afraid to pray

Terrified at what the silence couldn’t say

Tongue tethered to the skeptic beating in my chest

We’re no longer quite ourselves

Nor reflections of someone else

Lover, do you feel that tension

As we drift between silence and eternity?

Death is the road…road to awe

I stood atop the world

It’s asymmetry laid bare in front of me

Thanatophobic societies

Taking life to mourn their tragedies

I feared this world would never change

But you steady your resolve anyway

Let’s set the pen against the sword

How orphans long for peace

Before they learn to love the war!

Perhaps it’s our language

Perhaps we are incomplete

Words like shadows to what we see

Faint flickerings across the cavern in our minds

Candles in the dark, defiant to the night

“You pulled me through time”

Through the edgeless night

I learned to love as you learned to die

I’ll begin to feel again

And finish the chapter you couldn’t write

Candles in the dark, defiant to the night

Defiant to the shadow

You pull me through time

Through the edgeless night

I learned to love as you learned to die