Sons and Ghosts

How do you hold sands’ streaming

tiny irreverent beads?

Containment irrevocable- paths etched

casted out of idealized space

filled by sons and ghosts within

their movement- fractured bounds

of wayward conviction

Staring across the table

an abyss of expectations unfilled

steps taken in haste and backed off

in words not said nor met

in immediate formations

Their foundation laid in parallel

fragments defrayed

Borne of static spaces

lying between containment and engagement

and resting restless within arrangements

disjointed discomfort’s

hush falls over its scene

heads bowed in grace

clearing of the throat

Cut from the same genes

but not the same colorful spaces

they remain largely unexplored in sorts

like demilitarized zones

Staring now at depth and limitations

illuminated down into your numbered days

I see my own mortality

Matt Mauldin
9/2017
Santa Barbara, CA