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Algarrobo Tree

Either I am nobody or I am somebody.
I had hoped to surpass Dad, if not in life then in death.
Fifty-six, emergency call in the night, petrified in the morning.
A touch stone for my birthday.
I am under the illusion if I passed that age, everything will be a gift.
Still it was wonderful to find him again.

He was a fun, loving guy.
Must have been attracted to the tree's peculiar, amber sap
which runs down the trunk like honey.
Entices and encases.
He tumbled in,
engulfed by its sticky sweetness,
beautifully entombed, time frozen.

He rests beside the Algarrobo Tree.
A corpse rendered for eternity by its resin.
And my memory of him fossilized
into a brilliant, transparent gem.

Haven of Lost Dreams

My daughter; fleshless bone; a feather floating towards eternity.
She lugs her backpack:
hidden dumbbells,
thirty pounds of penance to a holy hallucination.

Drag her, kicking and biting.
Cram her for delivery; condensed, pressed, flattened into the slim Saturn.
We climb the coiled driveway to the high Mecca for anorexics.
Hospital of shadows and stifling fog.

Show and tell for anorexics.
Gaunt faces line up.
Check their skeleton weight.
View their drifting excrement.
Detached from body, she takes her place.
A Buddhist nun holding a begging bowl.

She is transformed into a goose stuffed with liquid concoctions.
Preached weight and high caloric paths to reason.
But unconverted, shrouded in passive-resistance rags;
ineligible for the elixir of therapy.
Told this girl needs a potent "tonic":
she is hard core

Through a mosaic of frozen tears,
I watch her weave down the hallway with tubes plugged up her nostrils.
She even smiles,
welcomes this invasion of dark furze;

It is here in this haven of lost dreams,
my crystal daughter slips through the needle of insanity:
adamant, food is the betrayer.
Relishes a feast of starvation.

© All Copyright, Eugene Barron.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.