grave poet

These ancient words are all I, aching, say.

I steal them from the dead of breaking day.

Words that hung on lips—now battered, old stone.

I cannot help remembering them, now my own.

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I used these words one autumn day out loud

—a figure in the streets, broken and bowed—

with a voice that wasn’t quite my own;

the skeletons joined me with flutes of bone.

You met my eyes and spoke in shadowed tones,

a melody that matched my own and shone.

We mingled with the poets long since gone,

the sounds we stole an ancient kind of song.