ISSUE 6

Addison Schoeman

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Chronic Life

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It wasn't John who watched the starlings burst
    From the still elms to stir a wispy shade
Into the otherwise blue sky—a first
    Sign of the coming evening, all arrayed
In warbled visage, like a twisting thirst
    For constant form, that, constantly decayed,
Presents a tension in the easy skies—
    It wasn’t watched by John, but by his eyes.
 

John had no proclivities for the stark,
    The beautiful, the overwhelming sting
Of time and loss, which on his mind no mark
    Did leave: he found agreeable the thing
Of value practical, pragmatic: bark
    Painted with moss and sun did not quite ring
His mental bell as did politics talk,
    Or cultivating fields of startup stock.
 

So when he died, and God descended to
    The Earth to take him up, John asked “Dear Lord,
Will there be Cable in the skies, where you
    And I can watch the game?” “John, is the Fjord,”
Replied the Lord, “of Heaven not so blue
    That all things else are colorless? Toward
What end are all your Earthly heeds, when but
    Your soul, like fire, ascends?” And John said, “what?”

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