Nature Beseeches Her Artifical Children

Nature speaks in a hush to these half-consumed fragments:
On the day you arrived I offered my best gift to the Holy House.
You came with proud men
Who abandoned you at my gate.
I will reclaim you
For my appetite knows no sate!
I possess an endless hunger for slagheaps
And towers long in decaying.
Evermore you return to my hand, to my dust and soil.

Your days in the sun were magnificent star-studded regalia!
Glimmering and shiny colorful pageant
Reflecting your hour upon life’s stage.
What have you lost?
What lies forgotten?
Your style is void for it is hammered into every new thing
To dart to the fore
Perchance to recycle,
Or lie snug in my deciduous breast.

Now the slumber begins.
You are my feast!
Then to the other side,
To break through the veil
Some will pierce, others fly---
Some, invalid, will crawl.
Some, consumed in the fire, will wake;
Others, mangled corpses with the crows’ pecks,
Will rise and will return to the elemental dissolution and void,
Stripped bare to the invisible.

You are metaphors,
Pale forms,
Geometric orphans
Whose mother dreams fortified dreams
Of your earthly sojourn I intone,
Of thee I sing!

The fallen white torch ash uncoils the hour’s passing;
Green leaves in bud or in full fisted waving
indicate time of year.

Rusting metals measures decades,
Traces of things thrown down
Whose useful hours upon life’s stage
Were bartered in brief joys
And momentary contacts
Then cast into secure oblivion.