The Spiral Bridge

now i see batman in the sky: 
the truth, a thing of mind, and eye, 
wraps all around this thing called time 
and leads me to a cooler clime, 

where once was stronger hope (and less) --  
the brave one, full with fecklessness, 
who climbed the spiral bridge to find 
that peace is but a piece of mind -- 

but you, my friend, you know things small: 
that life, while crazy after all, 
is sweet and low and sharp and high, 
and why we're half-parts earth 

and sky

The One That Wasn’t

She traveled the low, and dreamed of the peaks. 
Searching always her tribe, finding only their cliques,
She began to think, maybe, the problem was her:
For solutions just were not as advertised.

In the heat of the fall, in the cold of the spring,
She banked nothing and all on almost everything,
Was she neurodivergent, or just immature?
For the world seemed a little surprised

To find her as she was, or perhaps, as she wasn't:
Our do's and our will's do not fit one who doesn't --
And the moon still looks lonely to she-the-unsure,
The allure of just what wasn't

Prized

Only So Many

"How much time do we have left?" 
The young boy asks, his parents shrug --
"Just enjoy the time while you can,"
His mom says,
While his dad looks on with a camera.

Sea touches sand like breath in lungs,
Clouds form their shapes, these whales, these ships --
Time flows and washes all away,
The mind will lurch and reach and slip.

We've traveled here, my love and I,
For she's now sick, and we don't know
How bad is it is, or how it ends:
The waters crash and ebb and flow

And I still don't know how much time
There is or can be, nor will I;
Awake I am, out on this shore,
While she is sleeping in, nearby,

Only so many days like this --
Only so many hours, smiles --
As I, like my father's camera try
To capture wind, and love,

And miles

it was not so long ago —

there was that time -- 
and it was not so long ago -- 

  when rain fell into barrels by our door, 
  when pain was bearable upon that floor, 
  for you and me were linked, and strong, and free, 
  and true was more than price, or liberty. 

and when you felt your shoulder tapped, you went --  
it was your time, you said, and so you served -- 

  but afterthoughts and undertows be damned, 
  we had a dance to dance, a spotlight time: 
  but nothing bought, and nothing we had planned, 
  could comprehend the sentence, or the crime. 

there was that day -- 
and I guess it's been years -- 

  when though we were, you weren't, and that was all, 
  when going through meant me becoming small, 
  for as the rain evaporates by sun, 
  so we the two were destined 

     to be one
  

A March Quartet (IV)

DEATH will have its night; Life will have its day. 
 This is the world we're born into, this is the mortal way,
 
AS FLOWERS feel the sun despite the vast all-over cold -- 
 We're born to live, to learn, to feel, and maybe, to get old, 

WHEN WE must put our petals down, and give in to the earth;
 For death will have its night, and day will have its birth.

A March Quartet (III)

THERE'S ONE DAY cold, the next day warm, 
 The Spring, capricious in its whim; 
  The child runs and plays in snow, 
   Then sees a next when all will swim
   In streams and pools of sunny March,
  Beside green fields of Summer-soon:
 There's one day white, the next day green; 
It's all a ludicrous cartoon.

THE FIELD, it beckons to the young, 
 And to the old, the in-between; 
  But soon the wind will keening come, 
   And gray and white will cover green. 
   There is a rhythm, mad and great, 
  That all must learn and feel to know 
 We think that we're in charge, when we 
Are just part of the ebb and flow.