Self-Portrait as Future Third Person

His face becomes mammal-skin,
      parentheses
drawing shut the eyes.

      When he smiles—
half-moon bags.
      A terrible pallor

courts color
      away on holiday,
across deserts where

      sand dunes become his
shoulders drooped, his back
      a monastery housing

monks weighing him
      in prayers.
Mirrors are a road-
      map to lies—yester-year's—
or what he's come to know
      as the best

of his thighs. This
      is survival of the fit,
though he is the age

      of bovine milk, his body
a heavy stone
      he casts into a well—his

wish to crumble
      like ash, an ember
that burns inside

      out: a star no longer
gaseous
      but a swell

of brittle bones.
      This is the life
he'd live if only

      he could sleep
a thousand years,
      awakening when cows came

to pasture
      beside primroses
the color of after

      glow. This allies him
to simple pleasures
      he'll plant like wild

flowers in the flesh
      that will soon become
soil, a field blossoming,

      a harvest. The reason
he remembers to breathe.

Copyright © 2008 D. Antwan Stewart All rights reserved
from Many Mountains Moving
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission