Distant ringing of a telephone unanswered

We shared a grandmother
when the earth was not new, like us,
but middling, like her,
And we were footnotes
in an attic of memories,
As time spun us all.
Beneath the glass, age advanced
to shadow it, the light no longer emanating within her.
Crepe fingers gathered black cobwebs
and they said something that was
Not a simple few contractions:
"Grandmother has withdrawn from London permanently,"
and so did my heart;
but I could not pin back my hunger for her.
We have lost an age, which was never ours,
a cocktail of nostalgia and bitters,
and the one we have, we cannot contain,
the future lapping ever at the brim.

Natural Selection

Children will grow without us;
In towers, forests, and tulips.
Children will grow in spite of us;
Abandoned to wolves and witches,
they adapt and grow wise.
Children will grow to destroy us;
With their terrible pity,
new tomorrows,
and unenchanted mirrors.

The razor tight rope I walk for love,
Drank the repentance spilt from my knees;
These hands that cannot pray unless they hold him,
Bound the prayer cord about my hips like a chastity belt,
Cutting off circulation.
The saints hold me like a wounded thief on the cross,
Telling me the hows & whys don’t matter in sacrifice,
If I trust to the ends of creation;
But the song of glory is stuck in my throat,
And I will not render unto God what is his.