The Clouds, Like Us

The clouds, like us, seem made of naught but dust:
We travel over hard and rocky ground,
Through countless miles agitated strife,
Then pour our dirty selves back down to earth,
As ash to ash, and dust to dust, indeed.

The clouds, like us, chaotic and obscure:
We tangle in each other, slipping out,
And heaving back into confusing mist.
The past, the future, both – so much to know
That we can never fathom, though we try,
To find some shape or order in it all.

The clouds, like us, whose days are hard and brief:
But in whose tears are growth, and life, and hope.

Cherries

Social realities
Common dualities
Made from societal modern modalities

Hoping for Socrates
Stuck with banalities
Tortured by habit and anger and lyme disease

    Cherries we pick and then stack into piles
    Hidden by marketing image and smiles

Alibis heightening
Chains are all tightening
People who jump at the first sign of ripening

Burdens delightening
Fear of de-whitening
All who can listen are due for enlightening

    Cherries we pick and then bushel away
    Fruit that must come, and the price
    We must pay

Of Paradise

There is a history, untold,
Of paradise and passions bred;
And so we spend our living days
Among the houses of the dead

Beneath the selfsame sky they knew,
We walk their paths, and feel their souls:
For all that was, is yet to be,
And written on our own hearts’ scrolls

There was a story, long ago,
Of paradise and brilliance shed,
And so, these hours in the sun,
Where blue desires led to red

As time goes to infinity,
So we must go as humankind;
For all that was, is yet to be,
Our past and future, intertwined

Of paradise, there’s much to learn —
Like knowledge, softly shaken, in its turn