Brethren of Darkness by Lark Beltran

Spider-legions
traipse the room soundlessly,
trap flutterers and scuttlers
and drop their remains
to festoon moldy corners.
Bats dangle from ceiling,
flit ghostlike in moonsilver,
foul walls and torn pages
with their dung, their dead.

Before, sweet candlelight
and flower-curtained windows
kept at bay the gothic.
Views at dawn were Shangri-La.
Now, break-in´s jagged shards
litter the floor.  A tossed shirt's
pocket quivers with centipede-young
and wasps fling mud at a bookshelf.
Our complacent absence
fostered their charnal housekeeping.







Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Peru for many years as an ESL teacher.  Many of Lark´s  poems have appeared in online and offline journals.

Little Old Cemetery by Lark Beltran

Dawn trails night mist over cypresses
guarding a rusted gate seldom opened.
Beyond it, wisteria vines festoon
rows of crooked iron crosses, their
epitaphs corroding. A charnal charm
pervades, damp-earth effluvia
from has-been, laid-aside, long-lost loves.
Reddened with fallen bougainvillea bracks,
a rain puddle reflects the sad angel
honoring someone´s Maria.  Drained
of color, plastic roses in a cheap,
chipped vase before her tomb 
belie the affection of survivors
grown hoary and preoccupied
with their own mortality.  Full of life,
a robin scrabbles for the early worm.







Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived In Peru for many years as an ESL teacher.  Many of Lark´s  poems have appeared in online and offline journals.