Public Republic

Patrick Cornelius

Photo: CTBPhotography

In the stark damp twilight
of December’s brown and grey
a woman’s pulse whispers,
Come back.

She did test you like litmus paper,
damned your wrong colored hues.
And still her porcelain charity
mocks you, bids you,
Come back.

You stand beyond her tall iron gates,
where no lock accepts your key.
A new moon your only companion
as you wander dew-frost fields.

Solitude soaks your boots,
the ghost of opportunity
sleeps in the arms of forgiveness.

Across the river, a chanting train.
It steams on the cobalt horizon,
whistles a midnight parable
bound for the galaxies of Nirvana’s
onyx sky.

But you walk cold and sullen
silent ‘neath lonelier,
gilded constellations.

You cannot escape this island.
Its drawbridge, broken with regret.
Its ferry, stranded on a sandbar
of vacant promises.

There’ll be no passage home.
No comfort from sweeping winds,
‘til winter’s freeze builds new bridges
across the wild, rushing river
of your howling, deep despair.