And Finally, The Sun Sets Over August Charlie Barron I dream of a sea When I sleep -- which is foreign these days. An open land, a sprawling green, Washed white and gentle by compassionate rays. My sole, raw and calloused, Holds firm against the bow. And the lapping waves silence finally The voices so familiar now: See you soon, says March, optimist and naive. Unprecedented times, May rebuts in a flurry of subject lines. Alone alone alone alone alone, screams June. Or maybe it was July. Broken glass pours sunlight through a crack in the window blinds. Like the body of the bird which drapes my shoulder, Today begins over and over and over. Think Sisyphus, think mountain, think boulder. In August I see salvation; The crest of the horizon, my second wind obscured by the bend. But like so many promises broken, A beginning is just a disguise for another end. Lead does no justice. Weight; so modest as to be a lie. Consumed within a litany of false assurances “And yet I could not die.” In the waves, in the sunset, in the welcoming wind, A beauty which demands declare: From the knowing -- which is to say the haunting, “I bless them unaware.”
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