AK'SI-DENT IN PARADISE
                 
                     A quicker image of you passes
                     between madness and despair.
                     In mock serenades, waltzes and interludes
                     are signs that
                     the urn is cracked, mill broken, harvest lost.

                     Life's rain and sun of thorn and thistle
                     braid weeds about your hair.
                     Love's tangle of running aspersions come
                     too soon, too late or without notice.
                     Do I hold you
                     too close, too tight or in fear.

                     Embrace every incidental feature
                     in the rough of your eyes
                     here where the sharps are made flat,
                     the hard lines smoothed to the nacre
                     of chin then bone.

                     While in loss,
                     the speaker finishes the eulogy
                     and the bearers close the lid,
                     and the reaper finishes the hand,
                     we busy ourselves with the loving
                     but say nothing of the accident.
 .

David's other works