Twenty-four Carat Uncaring

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

His hair reduced to ashes blames the Christ

Whom he presumed to love and who he thought

Loved him, but then that God performed the heist

Of life in Shenandoah’s river, caught

Chuck’s heart and hands which he had used through life

With trees and latterly with paint.  Christ’s jolt

In death of baptism jarred rhythm, wife

And wife and wife.  The blue of eyes that bolt

Of lightning boiled alive, that blue that he,

Chuck, loved and loved and loved, and also blue

Of eyes of friend, “the salt estranging sea”

Dividing men.  Who cares if loves were true?

  The God and Christ sit thronged by angels, throne

     Of hardest gold as theirs, while lovers moan.

©  Phillip Whidden