Witness To Her Beauty

Lizzie O.  June 2006. 

Witness To Her Beauty

Nothing

Just the numbing static expanse

And silent disbelief

No electric wounds or wilting symptoms of disease

Only her statuesque presence

Spawning unrest and nightmares

In elderly neighbors who find fault with age

Bewilderment sank to depths of grief

Watching the shadowy figure climbing her

Binding her

The self-proclaimed surgeon

Amputating with dirty hands

Unsanitary tools

His wicked toothy-grinned saw

Slicing through her out stretched limbs

Her seasoned trunk

A horrendous display of unapologetic violence

In broad daylight

But how venerable

Maintaining her composure

The serenity that met finality

Sawed in half

A brutal actuality mirroring a magician’s audience-friendly illusion

Her strange pall bearers hoisting

Carrying her remains with forceful hands

To the obnoxiously loud grinder

Angry with hunger

Violently chipping away at her thick skin

Severing the halo of rings

Their life-glow born of each dawning sun

Once saturating her in green and gold      

Released as a sap sweet perfume

Blossoming in the lung choking exhaust

The summer rooted grass

Bleeding rusty brown earth

As the only solace to escape

Is the cyclic beauty of her beaten

Mangled flesh

Regurgitated and reincarnated

As a play inducing surface

Forgiving  

Welcoming adventurous little feet

Leaping from smiling swings

Hopes high with ambitious aspirations of capturing heights

Once her reality

Now their dreams

E.A.K. O’Connell