A poem by Mark Wittucke

MEMORIES SWEETER THAN THE ORANGE IN YOUR MOUTH



Traced a thought, taut as a thread

the life of a two legged Terran

reveling in the senses past redemption.



Think you now

honestly

what moved you?



Eternal play of youth

then death



and the suffering in between

gurgled worries wept



battered by wrath, then stuffed

headfirst into the pit.



Days at play, the sunlit room

imagination unmanacled, cat’s

engagement after the flicker,

hands wrapped in bobo fur

animate green plastic.

Heroes before the fall.



Life moved by aging, elder then aged,

fearful throughout, moving farther from

your childhood room or the bush where

you hid or the goal to which you ran

thinking you had won.



How’d eternal moments slip into time and

dissolve, suckled into the sun?



How could that presence (alighted

fingers feeding dead frights) disappear

forever into darkness?



It is hard to be human

when the tide pulls out.



5XII2006