Birthday

The clock keeps perfect time.
I know the way men go
When snow is falling, and it's late.
The snow keeps perfect time, the music waits
To trickle from our lives. Each death is slow,
And who can say what love is?
The lonely know. They often weep
From lack of poetry. Dreams
Are what a man does best,
Who has no plow.
He leaves no footprints in the snow
For wolves to follow.
He dreams an urchin in the street
Whose eyes are two live coals,
And remembers that scene from The Seventh Seal
Where the witch confesses nothing to lowly minds,
And Death is glimpsed briefly, dressed
As a clown, leading the newly deceased
Over a green hillside.
There are bundles of wheat in the background.
A white horse stands bewildered at the side of the road.

Copyright © 2010 Jay Griswold All rights reserved
from Asheville Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission