The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
The Long Sighs of Passing

Many are the wooden halls of balustrades
that spiral off into private abodes 
comfortable caverns where found things are 
squirreled into the crevices like some
inscrutable wailing wall of wishing
beckoning to rediscover bygone sparks
of eyes quivering in peachtone rays
whose blush has umbered with sepia dust
as eras erode the luster of the once nascent
into a palored patina of ennuid ambivalence
and a hardening gravitas that smells of what
we call a dignity to be venerated 
and though this antique store of obscura 
is intimately organized without labels, 
every hat bears its price tag and 
vintage masks hang quietly in the closet
next to the stacks of unhung memorials;
here the sigh bespeaks a solemn contentment 
of so much living having flowed by 
into a familiar arsenal of hand-fitted tools 
to repair, when needed, the running of 
our stygian river skiff and the cypress
push pole that has loosed our stubborn denials
with its bent and rock-frayed grain splayed
by unmovable mountains beneath our surface gaze
grief-polished and birth-braised our rapid days
have opened up into a golden reservoir and
a slower pace where lifted eyes open wide
to softer auroras and the dawn of starspray
wonder while gently lands the bow over
the last bit of gravel shore.
■





©2024 Mark Daniel Milbocker  All rights reserved.