Undiminished Adored Poem by Mark Heathcote

A virginal life can't always endure
singing songs, bridal White and pure.
Tubular stemmed for an hour-
the world is but a trumpet flower.

Darker still is the winged fox
that leaves a lair of shadows.
Now brings the world its awful pox;
the stage, set for each with gallows?

Sleepwalking into narcolepsy,
their vines grasp hollow and empty
as reeds—waving till they break
dispensing - roots their heartache.

Each flower folds as if…
its winding sheets for burial
were corroborative gifts?
Asking what is lives, deaths premise.

Am I not an eternal, living seed?
A kernel of infinitesimal needs
If I am one of your flowers, Lord,
I know that in you,
I am undiminished and adored.

There are chess pieces white and black.
Who fight from the cradle to the grave.
Each wishes separately to be saved.
But for me, I want to sleep in a cradle.
Be rocked into a grave forever, sleeping in a sable.