An End to Mourning

By: Albert Huffstickler

Loneliness stands on the corner
waiting for a handout.
The book of love
has all the pages torn.
The weatherman says rain today
but what does he know?
We'll be born again like flowers,
mindless as flowers,
entranced by our own beauty
while in the sepulchres of alleys
the beggar kneels
before an altar of broken windows.
His prayers rise up
like smoke from ancient fires as
along the back streets of the heart,
the blind man taps a cosmic semaphore
and all the lights in the city
go out at once. 

You can find this poem in Albert Huffstickler’s — Why I Write in Coffee Houses and Diners: Selected Poems