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If We Are To Be Their End
(An actual play of LooseLeaves with Jory Bowers and Brendan Adkins)

Perhaps on details here we disagree,
under hazy skies, with clouds in rows,
whether those were simply two we spied
or those the only two of them there are.

Each wearing colours of the setting sun,
each face obscured by a distinctive mask.
The image of an eye, no eyes within.
Facing the direction of their flight.

Did they each have names once, long ago?
Even they can’t drudge the memory.
’Tis only what they are that they recall,
and where they are to go ‘fore all is lost.

The moon is their cold father, voiceless now.
When last he spoke, their father spoke of us,
and bade them to descend beneath our feet,
and down below our dead to claim their prize.

And did they not make safe the homes of wolves,
so wolves to that safe harbour could return?
Have they perhaps made younger of their kind,
who may outlive and mourn the two we know?

And when they pierced the three-faced tower’s wall
the eldest and the hungriest yet lived.
For ages in that tower windowless,
and now there’ll be no calm days, only still.

One eats the fruits found in the hearts of men,
which taste at first of nothing, then are sweet.
We’re animals to them, and pitiful,
yet we will be their end, so mark my tale.

And yet they see their future in ourselves.
An end is a beginning, and again.
This is why they seem to care for us,
even as the wind blows through our homes.

A blade will not touch them while sun is high,
and nor with arrows can we them address,
while their father moon is in the sky.
The sky’s cruel darkness is our only chance.

So though on details we may disagree,
such discussions do make short the hour.
They scent us by the steps of our retreat,
like different petals from a single flower.