Generations

You're dying and all of a suddden every day is a good or bad day.
A generation of those who dared to live is dying, while

a song emerges from behind the clouds; several high voices
hanging in the dying twilight; weaving in and out of harmony; following

each other about. This is true like putting words to the feeling of a dream.
A poet once said a dream lingering is like wet grass in sunshine.

                                                    ***

If you had ever met Wayne you would have noticed he moves fast; his spark is
lapsing now in drunk days, becoming pale, pulling on pipes and joint days,

once again speed days. You know that you didn't know him at all. He knows,
he is always there again; Wayne will always be that way. He's smart, he

told Dave why he was going blind, it was time for him to die. They're both
dying, and it's going on, waves of it rolling through us, this AIDS, it might be me

and it might be you too. Wayne could be dead or maybe he is walking on a windy
street right now. There was one time he wouldn't open up the door but I saw

his eyes through the window. Tortured from his war on himself, I caught a glimpse
of how they first thought up gunpowder, later cannons and the atomic bomb;

how things can be so fragile and loud at the same time.
I mean in the same instant.

                                                    ***

The song is smooth now; every day the leaves changing — oranges
bursting into glowing embers. It hurts a little too, because

they're going and the air cannot hold them up. This life as fragile as birth.
Like telling your children what to do and the children saying no they will not.

How can we put up these boundaries, we will always be walking on sidewalks,
looking at the edges of buildings cutting into the sky; these things are fragile and

it's enough to know there's something left in the heron's flight up the river
and it's a good enough day for a song in the morning.

— Heidi Woolover