Tim's Step Stool

Sunlight warms its wood

 - loving strokes in the shape of hands

whorls of light layered brown and gold 

like gleaming hazel eyes.

Scars stipple the skin of the legs and bench -

Pale, rippled,

etching deep the satin flesh.

Still standing  solid and certain beneath garlands of devil’s ivy- -Thriving writhing vines -   a wreath for worn edges -  verdant  with unapologetic life A gleaming presence in his eternal absence.

35 years gone.

Falling

It falls like a gentle poison, glazing

blood and bile - a slick and sickly sheen too thick

for breath or breadth of thought, muscles lazing,

eyesight hazing as though facing a lick

of light and shade - the flicker of candlewick

that limns the mind but obscures the fine crease

between skin and bone, beneath heart and ease

that pleats the soul delicately, like lace

so fine it binds the loosened fragile piece of self forever lost to its rightful place.