Modern Romanticism

It retreats all form,
to be loose with leaves,
to become decay.

It relieves what surfaced,
to sink it beneath
the coldest waves.

Holding captive
a knife that drives
into an aged wound,
unwilling to
release the grasp
on the hilt.

It goes deep,
an unchanged story
that keeps pages
always burning.

They’re never turning
to find freedom
at the end,
when real relief
is discovered
deeper than
the innermost.

This world
appears as brittle
as the bark
that goes dark,
before such depth,
before the roots
are revisited.