Page 15 - Contrast1990
P. 15
December
by Steve Zumbrun
She dropped below a kindly pine
Upon a silk-lined bed
Of moss and needles, leaves and blooms
That crumpled 'neath her head.
Her ghastly form was swathed in rags
Offetid cloth; cruel dust and grime
Lay carved into a vall eyed face
Raked by the claws of Time.
Within an iron ice-white pool
two draggled feet were sopped.
Her life gasped out on grass-spiked ground.
Her breath swayed, fluttered, stopped.
Then angry red gushed from her frame
And frosted all the grass.
It smoked and broiled and steeped her limbs
With the stench of bitter brass.
And as that crimson storm churned down
To meet the boiling lake
A sticky ball of life it rolled
And tumbled in its wake.
The stars sighed, shivered, and loosed their load
Upon that life's first moan.
The snowflakes sparkled through the sky
And hissed upon the pond.
Snow splashed into the wash of red
And smoothed over its reek
A star of snow touched the babe's eye
And trickled down his cheek.
Ringed with wise nodding trees she died
Above her baby's crumpled frame.
And all that I would ask is this-
Who craves to know her name?
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