What Dies Once Poem by Patti Masterman

There is a fallopian woodenness,
There, where her springs should flower-
Instead, long tunnels of dark with no candle-watts at the end,
No explosion of fireworks no flume of tumescent colors,
No picnics in the forest no encampments in the cave.

The tulips curl backward on the wrong stalks,
The buds sit stillborn like a sinking boat's wake.
The lullabies ache in unsung throats.

A stork circles to weariness and flies away,
Back into books of unread fairy tales;
Back into eyes that gleam with unsatisfied expectation

Into a cold world that doesn't care and doesn't notice
That something has gone missing,
That something will never have a heartbeat;
The world that only half believes we are still here,
And wonders why we refuse to leave,
After so much time had already passed.

And why does one's genetics flourish,
While another's die off-
As if somewhere down a long line of generations, ,
One's ancestors must have drawn the short straw,
Which has been growing shorter every decade since?

Or maybe too many prunings have altered the seed;
Or too many salty tears have killed the sprout:
What dies forever will die by the hand of Spring,
But what dies once is reborn, again and again.