(Originally posted July 2, 2014. – Owen)
Standing here as the text came in Informing me that you had died And there beside a perfect scene I turned my head and cried Tears for the man you could have been Tears for a life that went astray And somewhere, now, a rainbow falls And a spirit floats away
They called to say you would no longer eat,
Or take your meds, or try to live at all;
The first I ever knew, at last to go
To follow Dad behind the giant wall
We love, but then in parenthood, it seems
That love is asymmetrical and strange;
Yet nothing is more normal than this love
That bonds us past our years, and strength, and range
There comes a time when we must yield the ghost
And move offstage, for all our lines are done;
But how I wish it need not be today,
As do us all – we creatures of the sun
I know I must accept this fate, this choice;
For from you came my reason, and my voice —
And still I wish it wasn’t – wasn’t so —
That you would leave,
And I watch you
Let go
Upon this lane, in former times,
We’d see them, walking hand in hand;
A pretty girl, a handsome boy,
It seemed they had their futures planned,
Right here – in former times.
Upon this lane, the sunset fell,
And he walked by one day, alone,
For she was gone, that pretty girl,
And darkness in his eyes had grown
After the sunset fell.
Upon this lane he shuffles by,
A limping man you’d never know
Had been a lover in his time
As bright as any beam or bow –
For hearts beat on, when often they
Have lost their cause for beating;
The sheep are in the meadow now,
I hear them back there, bleating —
He walks now, with his hat and cane,
The sunset goes, the night comes on –
A handsome boy who lost his love
And waits to sleep, and find the dawn
Where he will touch her hand once more,
Upon this lane,
Upon this lane.
When to the common rest that crowns our days,
Called in the noon of life, the good man goes,
Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays
His silver temples in their last repose;
When, o’er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows,
And blights the fairest; when our bitter tears
Stream, as the eyes of those that love us close,
We think on what they were, with many fears
Lest goodness die with them, and leave the coming years…
– From “Ages” by William Cullen Bryant
I think of you, and time stops flat.
For time means nothing at the end:
The years fade out like photographs,
And all that is, is what has been –
There is no burying my heart,
I’d walk a hundred thousand trails:
For desert waste won’t keep away
The love that lives
When all else
Fails
the “once upon a time” they had
was good as good could be:
and when they danced their wedding night
it was pure ecstasy
a long-haired cinderella, and
her handsome, charming prince;
and in the castle that they built,
they had been happy since
oh, yes. she lived the fairy tale.
the days of love and laughter
when happily they spun their lives,
and would do, ever after —
if ever after was a thing.
it isn’t now, it seems:
and flowing hair just a ghost
that she sees in her dreams –
for when the curtain finally falls,
the play is not the thing,
but our brief times upon the stage
when we’ve got strength
to sing
So many things that once held sway
Don’t matter anymore;
Leviathans of yesterday
Are just the junk next door
The railroads, once so mighty then,
Mere shadows of the past:
As will be all our boastings when
The future’s here
At last
the real world that i know is merely this:
abandoned graves beside forgotten roads —
no grandeuered Ozymandias in state,
just feeble vanity
that time
corrodes
