… there’s still life ahead
I wish the autumn gave me back
A semblance of reality,
The knowledge that I seem to lack
Of what’s in actuality
A simple set of words to read,
Of hope in heart and truth in deed,
And leaves that turn before the snow,
And places that I cannot
Go
Last night, we crossed the bay,
Past six, and very cold,
Seen only outlines dim,
Cast off into the dark.
Tween where we were and are,
Mien frozen or relaxed,
Caught laughing or reclined,
Lean, anxious and adrift.
Bought time, but never love,
Fought off, and often slept,
But always in the heart
Sought what was good and best.
Rut dug, and then indwelled,
Shut down, shut off, shut in —-
What matters now is love,
What matters now
Is love
Feel the truth you’re supposed to feel,
Be the person you should be;
Keep it low and keep it real,
Occupy your destiny.
Show the love you’re supposed to show,
Be the difference you’d see made —
Then go where you’re meant to go,
Unencumbered,
Unafraid
Photo credit : D 106374284 Yuliya Baturina | Dreamstime.com
the night came fast, and so they drank the shadows;
then woke to light that stung and scratched their eyes.
a gallery now stripped of all its paintings,
uncluttered with the evidence that they
had ever changed or terraformed surroundings.
the day had poured into each crack and crevasse,
the floor seemed new again, as though to say
“you had your fill of dark, the spring is coming:
come feel the possibilities and go.”
but they no longer heeded to the light,
but lingered just to taste the last few dregs
The day is gray and wet;
I place a candle here.
I neither can forget,
Nor can remember clear.
The face, it starts to fade,
The voice, it dies away;
I struggle to take hold,
But all is in decay —
For though we light our lights,
The years win out, at last.
The losingest of fights:
Our battle with the past.
But I will not give in,
Though, sure, at last, I’ll fall —
For I loved and was loved,
And that was worth
It all
She first escaped at twenty-three.
A bicycle, a battered van,
A life that she could taste, because
She sampled it, at her own pace and where.
She felt the wind upon her neck,
And her own tongue within her mouth,
The ache of stretching, working limbs
That carried her the whither she would go.
A weathered book of Kierkegaard,
A necklace made of icy gold,
And one September when she had
No answers, nor desire to provide them.
And who was I? Just one regret.
A place she’d traveled to, and cried;
A type of warning of the life
She’d never settle for in place of freedom.
So, now there is a woman grown,
Who owns a bicycle no more,
Who’s seen her own two daughters go
And wanted to impart this gift, this lesson —
But cannot find the proper words
To speak of strength in time alone
That do not sound like hectoring
Or lessons quaint and from an era gone…
For night means nothing
If you’ve missed the day;
And love is only possible
If you have your own self
To give
Away
Like aloe and witch-hazel,
She balms the troubled soul,
Although I do suspect that is
Not typically her goal —
She’s more of a disrupter,
At odds with her own ends:
And if you dive too deep, you will
Most surely get the bends.
“Where nothing’s promised, much is given” —
(To a fevered brain)
Like aloe and witch-hazel,
You might try her
In vain
