November Fell In The Bole Of A Tree

Their eyes will never see tomorrow.

Hidden within the bole of a tree,

they wept through darkened roots of sorrow.

Imprisoned, yesterday’s memory,

whose eyes will never see tomorrow.

 

Kokosing Lake swirls with autumn mist,

and the wind scatters the peace of mind

of those left behind with hand in fist

to suffer the worst of humankind.

 

Night weighs heavy on the quartered moon.

The wood smoke rises over the hill,

and skeletal leaves in death commune

in the fade of life-giving chlorophyll.

 

Ivy trails a wall of ancient stone,

whose splintered beam is about to break;

but none should suffer in grief alone

when suffering for another’s sake.

 

November counts away the hours

as night outpaces the light of day.

Brushed black silk and forgotten flowers,

intermingled, in the dust do lay.

 

Within a column of smooth, gray bark,

in the heartwood of evergreen sweep,

where lovers are known to carve their mark,

pale faces lay in the arms of sleep.

 

The once bright-eyed and smiling faces

are now lifeless in a leafless tree,

and blood-red stains resound in traces

in rings of a mournful threnody.

 

Mankind slips into a tangled knot.

A nudge of wind is perched on the pine,

and life is twisted into a garrote

whose kisses are death to thee and thine.

 

How sad to suffer ourselves to die!

When night encircles, we cease to be.

One man’s laughter is another’s cry

whose lone comfort is insanity.

 

The eyes are flooded with sanguine tears

over loved ones that have been taken

whose lights have dimmed and whose hopes and fears

you won’t find trace of when you waken.

Author's Note

A poem about Kody Maynard (11), Tina Herrmann (32), Stephanie Sprang (41), and Tanner, the family pet. All were murdered, dismembered, and their bodies lowered into the bole of a beech tree, November, 2010, Ohio.

Reviews

[Pax Analog]

Indelible. Again real crime informs the brood. Because real-life Criminal Minds victims not only focus mourning, and remind us of the carnage that literalization of the dark side can conjure, but I know it reminds me always of "I remember nothing now on purpose/all the little murders in our midst" from a '93 song of mine "Alone on the Range" and the guru Adi Da's poem lines "Who is not Light Itself/performs the murder/of everything while we eat" --

Not at all to ignore the literal worst because of the layered metaphor, but because some of these issues do run deep enough to go Gnostic. I have this inner sense of the poet's mission and weaponry, vis-a-vis the grid. Ultimately, one cannot become the willing accomplice of the crimes against humanity stalking every archaically trivialized rule of law and culture.

Contemplating the specifics of these three people and their pet would spawn a novel -- you up for Capote/In Cold Blood? ;-)

The mind boggles contemplating psychic intimations of disaster.

The bole of the tree makes the whole thing strangely mythological too.

Your poem is a chain of wreaths of remembrance finely grown and wrought.

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

your author's note opened the mystical feel of the poem to a tragic sky weeping~
what monsters walk amongst us with human smiles hiding the knife that cuts everything apart and short~
I will NEVER understand the monster in human skin~and I NEVER want to~