The Reign

Grief is a thyme leaf,

a song a knight sings.

Belief is a bell tolled,

balm of the old kings.

Belief is a rhyme sheet,

a song that rings false.

Grief is untold,

the gist of all missed calls.

Always the golden bough

remains in the distance,

unseen but dreamed of

in the deeper hours of now.

Words are found

like washed round river stones

and hummed by once and future laundresses

and beneath the city’s sound.

But the reek of absence

sweeps through the hollow,

through all the wet brown days

that ever will follow.

Numbed by desires,

you care not in the least

who shall burn,

and who join the feast.

Always, forever --

it seems; but never

anything feels certain,

except for cold rain.

Though belief is no phantom,

and grief is no symptom;

they’re red sweet chest meat

and a lethal lack of sleep.