Exit Sign

Another by Liz. I cannot read this out loud with out coming close to tears. Ok, sometimes they do sprout, depending on my frame of mind. It's just beautiful.

It's because so many want it.
Some small endings make hearts
beat like helicopter wings,
forgetting the sense of things
as wicked, devastating, heart-wrenching.

It's because so many see endings
as originating beginnings;
think they'll be survivors.

Lounging hopefuls in the hall;
faces blazing in the light of the exit sign.
Someone actually said it...
it would be a massive disease,
a modern plague, no cure.
She'd be a survivor, so said her dreams.
She'd rebuild society,
was looking forward to it.

These were her dreams.

And I dreamt of silence,
of pure and isolated ending.
I woke up, not a survivor,
not a savior,
but a cave of uselessness,
and the morning was red
and vacant.

Both this and the cow poem are ca. 1995, but she's still putting out great things. Not the least of which is a squash-banana-pistachio-green bean rhinoceros.