A Country for Anything but Old Men

A Country for Anything but Old Men Luke Wilcox

I’ve had the displeasure of watching those old men fade, Departing this life just before I realized I needed them. I wanted to ask, “Did you know that life was this cruel?” But they were gone, one in an urn, burnt to little pieces That would never resemble the kindness I remember. Another in the ground, the last I saw of him, his face taxidermic and cosmetised To an unnatural sheen, his bones with a fine gloss over them As the flesh dissolved before the oils. And one I barely knew, Seized by a bottle and anger, a man so furious that I could feel pain as my father told me of his father. When he was out, they would hide his belts, so that they would suffer Only his hand, after they were dragged out from under their beds. But I imagine him as a great man anyways, one that life broke into pieces, and so he broke his children in turn. Now he is gone; the hand of discipline skeletal And decayed, laid flat upon burial, but now curled Under years of soil, reminiscing with erosion At the fact that handshakes no longer matter.