A thought may amble a bit ‘till it trips to a halt,

            ‘till it ticks up a halt and a half.

Slams to a door and whatever blue-black residue flirts with the hinges,

This curving,
cynical back behind me, it’s:
A warm bench,
A warm chestnut bench,
A warm chestnut.  A cold foreboding pew.
Luster here has now turned bland:
contaminated with waltzing dust and
a reek of pages
not turned for a decade.
Maybe more.

The sky was an abyss of gloom,

As the trees billowed in the breath of the wind.

The stars sang secrets to the moon,

Above a castle holding lovers within.

An age-old monarch was outraged by his daughter’s betrayal,

It is a wall.

It is stiff, blank. Unmoving. 

It guards the paradise 

That she knows belongs there.

It is a stone

Waiting for her, the sculptor, 

To make it mean something.