I have done a pitiful job, failed
at my simple task, to bear witness
to the love of life and the itch
toward death. A poet’s job
is testimony and the hesitant quest
for the words and their order.
So what have I seen that I ought
to report? What have I overlooked
or failed to recognize? The tree
beyond this window was threadbare,
tattered by the late winter wind.
Now it wears a great coat
of summer leaves. The sun is high
and bright on the last day of June.
Our faces deeply lined now, hair
variegated gray, we heave
from the chair with a groan. But I
never saw the cause of anything,
so I can’t tell you why. We rise
and eat and let our dogs dance
around us in sparks of happiness.
Then for some strange reason, we turn
to the east, lie down and sleep.

6.30.2013

I Witness by Kyle Kimberlin
is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.