Weeping Separation

To hear weeping fall
like music
from a father’s lips –
“O Absolam, my son.”
To search to understand
in vertigo
to run across a barren mind
with a fading purple sky
to your own river
separating

North from South;
a divided kingdom.

Sobs sound across boarders
like the bellows
of livestock that bleat
longingly across a pasture.

They lament their own who crossed
over the boundary.
Those taken
by kingship lust
or crocodiles.

Those riding, captured,
hung in trees,
those devoured, put to pieces,
leaving only red rivers behind.