#243: December 22, 2006

She took me down the trail through stands of birch
and poplar, skipping over Jimson's Crick
whose clay-stained waters flowed orange through slick
blood-colored mud, and finally to the church.

The hollow-eyed windows stared from the past
blindly down weed-choked cemetery lanes
where lettered stones were beaten smooth by rains
and ivy cloaked fire-blackened shards of glass.

Then when she lay me down upon the crypt,
her pale breasts veined just like the moon above
that watched, perhaps less judgemental than cold,
we sanctified our death-bound hearts, and stripped
down to its bones the cage around our souls
whose lock we--we alone--are guardians of.