A Garden of Shirts

In these no doubt some hearts were broken
Lasers scribbled their crimson trenches
Like swords of flame.
And yet hot tears and passions cold
did not bleed through these palimsests.
They flowed,
And since, stopped writing,
Crinkled arroyos sprouting
After the wet season, followed by the dry
numbness as fruitfulness
became disillusion.

Perhaps there followed acceptance of the sad,
Inevitable decline
From humming youth
To humdrum age
And its unavailing platitudes.

Still one may gaze at these and think how tender
Some were, at some moments, some of the time
As they looked for glad evenings.

And maybe with these wrinkled skins discarded
As sloughed by snakes
Discarded therewith also was their youth’s unknowing.