WHEN joy rains down like paint falling from a clear sky, and laughter streaks across pavement, turning the rain into a riot of color, then do I understand togetherness: two parts dignity, and three parts vulnerability, this wonderful mess that is our lives -- hues, pavement and water: time, place, and love.
We watched her set her heart on things That seemed, each day, to grow more far; The blessèd weeks stretched out to years Like running towards the evening star. The chase, the goal, the destiny: The journey set, the route in flux -- But it's not hope out on the Chase But cynicism that Corrupts
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.
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.
THE TRULY different, we forgive, the almost-alike, our enemies; We formulate cases in our labs to spread biotic crop disease, But where those crops won't grow, we find a breeze, a shore, a sunny way; The truly different live in peace, The almost-alike must rue the day.
THE WIND blows hollow, from the South; The mind shrinks back in wondering -- Yours was the waiting, Winter heart, Somnolent hopes, all slumbering -- There is no din, just Nature's voice, Clear as the stab of stricken pain: Those who you call, won't come again, Those you have loved have moved away. The Cold's not gone, it's in your bones, It's in the way you slowed-down move; Yours was the Heart that gave, and all -- Body and mind and cash and food -- In chapters written sans regret, You spent all the Spring you had within: This wound is the sword of grief's sharp edge, Ubiquitous part of human kin.
Oh, I am sad and broken, like
The intermittent waves that cross
The frozen sands of straggling winter;
I am homeless, lost and seemingly evermore
Sad and broken.
Oh, I am one and many, like
The friendless waves that stream
Across the lifeless shores of empty cold;
I am all and nothing -- all that is, and
Nothing that could be.
Does this span and upset
Portend something?
Or, are emotions just things
Sent to remind of us of
Our inherent insanity?
Am I all things,
All broken things,
Or does the prism of my thought and heart
Break the light before it
Can warm me?
Give to me the myriad
Of pains, regrets, and griefs you bear
And I will spin them into gold
That you can throw away, or wear,
Or any other thing you like.
I can perform this task: and yet
You linger on the edge of doubt
And worry, wonder, frown, and fret.
The myriad you’ve carried long
That twists like cancer in your soul
That’s both your sorrow and your joy
And what you see as, now, your role —
It is a part, but need not be
The self-defining weight it’s been:
You can let go of all the all
And place it here, with me, your friend
And then, within the silent slant
Of colors breaking into song,
The plethora of what’s to come
Can linger - lovely, low,
And long
