Deathbed Confession

"What are these feelings? What is this pouring down my face?” -- Last words on a deathbed 1. Promises in exile devolve into dust. Dust breeds decay, blight of brilliance, mannered disuse. Dust cannot be wiped away from our dull, bleaching bones. Lamps beam in the fog of England’s low-lying towns. I drive through Cotswold lanes at night, headlights scanning the site of my ultimate demise. 2. As a child, I watched my father split ricks of wood. Spit in palms, blade eviscerating wobbly stumps. Henry VIII would have been proud. I confused pride with fear, blindly walking away from our homestead into an ocean of poems that washed away my smallness of mind. A calling. 3. Older, I turn nearer the future, unwilling to craft a lasting shelter against my body’s ancient foes: punitive tribes within Plato’s cave. Times past seem ghostly. Soon they will return against my wishes -- laughing executioners dangling endless promises of youth before the netherworld of exile.