Well Poisoned

Well Poisoned

Here of a morning by the marge of the pool
Gamboled little lambs of the Golden Rule.
Here sat the shepherds of the unwary eye
Talking to their flocks and those passing nearby.

Green was the valley, glad was the day,
Bright were the eyes of the innocents at play.
Clean swept the breezes around the tender limbs,
Rushes sang softly the soothingest of hymns.

Happy charmed the valley by whippoorwill and bee.
Merry purled the rivulets toward the crystal sea.
An azure sky of promise beckoned angels’ show,
Who loved to fly hither where joy was meant to go.

God once broke and shared loaves and fishes of His grace,
Blessing all with plenty in the sunshine of the place;
But now broods the valley in the chill of frosty morn.
El sol has lost his pallor, la luna peers forlorn.

Bereft of boon companions, unseen by liquid eyes,
Bleach white the bones of used-to-bes into the turbid skies.
Death treads the valley midst stench of foul decay
That sickens through the nights crowding out the day.

Shepherds yawned as Tolerance brought his flask to the spring.
He smirked enigmatically and poured the entire thing
Of heroin, strychnine, of arsenic’s deadly dose,
Compound to dull the senses, concoction to kill the most.

Now, in the haunts of might-have-been, trapped in the woe of is
Silently dwell the poisoned, barred from His well of bliss.
Here lie haughty proud beside unwary ignorance.
Their epitaph says it all: We Welcomed Tolerance.


drd