The Ancient Modern
Patience / Joshua Alan Sturgill
All things are as they shouldn’t be
The tender skin and the bumble bee
The picnic fork forgotten where it fell
A couch in the lobby of an old hotel
Long letter written on a tear-stained page
A tiger’s uneasy truce with its cage
Eons expanding: long defeat, slow burn
Even expectancy awaits its turn
The lucent Saint with a matted beard
An oil lamp shines, though cracked and smeared
A wife, her husband’s inattention
News of catastrophe, casually mentioned
A husband, all his wife’s complaints
Conjecture plagues everyone, even the Saints
Allow the world to misuse its names
Make peace with hunger and with shame
Dining alone in a private room
Dying alone in a post-war gloom
Hallways, neglected passage to other places
Other antiquities, vanished races
A wise man comes to the end of his hours
An old rose-of-sharon still offering flowers
Temple of ten thousand altars and spires!
How might I survive the surrender
of all things to fire? by Patience:
Desire observing desires
darklybrightpress.com 