Lines Found Written in the Visitors Ledger of a Hikers Shelter in the Great Smokey Mountains
Between showers
And it’s so still
The leaves are like the breath
A soldier holds
As he kneel in leaves
I mean that
Green and still
Looks like the rain has passed
Down its jewelry
To these woods
The only granddaughter
She ever liked
Who insisted
She didn’t want them
But who wears them
Once a year
The only moving thing
Amongst all these things
That move me
Are the butterflies
I have it
On good authority
That they’re the afterlives
Of spring flowers
Boys beheaded in boredom
I wonder do they
Seek shelter
As I have here
Or are wings
A form of shelter?
I wonder too if death
Is the mother of beauty
Who is beauty’s father?
Is he no longer in the picture?
What I really mean is
I want to hold the world
But it’s always falling