Don Kingfisher Campbell

Morning for the Dead

 

A procession of black umbrellas across a grassy valley

To the peaked memorial mountain where a gold cross

Shines in fiery light as birds file over corpsed graves

Extended to silently reach for remembrance of illusory

Mourning in which some still believe geography divides

When we are all the same detritus feeding the ground

Only one red-covered mourner acknowledges he follows

This sad pack, observes their breathing for passing hours

The dynamic daily destruction that doesn’t need our help

We are decorated finite presences on bountiful rich land

Today he will tell them time is just a perceived measure

For a flock who forgets they merely move moments since

Nothing else waits but lives on for perpetuated endings

Filled fallow minds finally comprehending the merger

Mark

 

We met fighting in a kindergarten sandbox for space

Became elementary friends a couple years later

But junior high is when our adventures blossomed

Walking home from school together splitting

Six Weinerschnitzel hot dogs for a dollar on the way

Up the hill to our tract home asphalt street lives

Punched you in your brace-filled mouth when you took my seat

The principal couldn't understand why buddies fight

Even the school play we were in Then And Now

Ended with real stage swings surfer vs chicano

You wrote me a letter telling me you were gay

Before revealing it to your family yet I knew

Already because you never talked about girls

I went to your bar mitzvah soon afterward

Next summer I stayed at your new home in Van Nuys

So I could go to Grant High to study typing

We had our greatest discoveries then in sexuality

We skinny dipped in your pool then streaked on the sidewalk

You introduced me to the progressive music of ELP

You were especially moved by the lyric on six million jews

We went to Yes concerts annually both of us big fans

You were my best man in my only courthouse wedding

Decades on we went to a small band show (who was it)

And you got mad at me for talking to a rocker girl

So you broke up with cisgender me completely

Then your father died and you invited me to the funeral

I didn't go just kept on being a Facebook friend

Learned how heartbroken you were when your dog passed

Found out you were hospitalized with kidney trouble

Now second hand I discover you've been gone for a year

What to make of this lifelong odyssey of memories

Of times when our hearts intersected in common interest

And moved on when we didn't fit any more

Fare well in that recycling earth love your ex-bestie

Sonnet to Oblivion

 

Where the moon is full

I cannot bark at any one

I blindly stare at heaven

See trees worship sun light

Even though it is mid night

A glow glints on every thing

Distant waves glimmer again

And again I am awe struck

The sand of the land walk

Tells me I am not alone

In this moment silent fall

When a life only wishes

There will be time to flee

To the bliss of unbeing