Of What Will Be

Editing out the
blackheads and
pugnacious bits of a
brashly bucolic tract
I am actinically affected
by soul-abiding decency.

Is this
really me
seeing an infant
in atavistic innocence
– harbinger of what
will be?

Burdened
by conscience cowed
in derelicted military absences
I recall deliciously
cuddling my sons
in their earliest years.

Grand-niece Kiara simply
smiles inviting more memories.
Pleased by the beard she
seeks only familiar while
I collide
with crescendoed reveries.
© 30 May 2008, I. D. Carswell