Friend

it had stopped raining only briefly

the day we folded your husk into black sand

your paper atoms now sway under a sky

that is almost hesitant to shudder

for fear that resuming it's habitual woes

might flake your last traces from turning leaves

the void wasn't as you had told friend

leather boots upright but hardened

cane hung by the door in posture

sunkeneyed fickle teeth cracking

so read of truth and awe

you stopped eating you kept smoking

as love whimpered from under

a fading corona

a corridor of growth rings

the pitch pine's repose against sand barrens

a sapling whose latent roots we embedded

so far into the cavern of your sternum

that one day we found ourselves

supplanted by the crispness

of fallen leaves underfoot

your insubstantial whisper

of the longer way back home