They Do Nothing

Look under garden stones,

Behind black waterfalls,

They will stare into your eyes

Without guilt and purpose,

Covered in blankets of moss,

Biding their time until never,

They do nothing but look into

The notes of Time as if feasting

On events and bloating on turbulence

Find their open mouths perched

On false columns and gray stairwells,

Hear the creak of their joints

When they migrate with dandelion seeds

On allotted landscapes with fairy lights

Because they refuse to wear the iron

That commits lesser men to the ground,

They cannot digest the sickly mortar

That binds fortresses of ambition

And makes gutters of thick arteries,

No, they are much too divine, you see,

Their eyes are lanterns that throw

Moonlight on every forest floor,

Do not confuse the reflections

Of knotted trunks and bulbous roots

With melancholy,

You will sully the dregs that lovers wear

When tempests in small cups were spent,

Throw away the longing in their empty hands,

Lest you make of privation a charade

Too easily worn by gaunt faces,

Old faces, worn faces,

Calcified, porous, stone faces,

These are men you will walk on

Long before their husks are cast,

And they will not deign to be human enough

To cry protest.