Snapshot: On Finding An Abandoned Stall in the Desert (Revised)

On 2019122320191223 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

There was a final time: the stall set out,
With jewelry and fabrics in a line —
The next day, and thereafter then, no more;
No more, and soon, no one with memory
To paint in images or words the scene
That once was daily, year on year on year.

The mundane, the quotidian: our lives,
Not big events, but habits of our days,
They soon lie empty on a sandy waste —
The firebird heads into the unknown,
High o’er the mountains, just past where we see,
To leave behind our stalls for someone else

The Grove

On 2019121020191209 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

I woke. My people turned to trees.
Then wondered, if I had the chance
Could I, too, with the cold winds learn
to dance?

It is the grove that gives us life.
The sun, the soil that we share,
The tears of those who watch o’erhead,
their left-by mulch, subconsciously aware —

I sleep; my people growing tall.
Now am I just too fast to feel
The slower dance that’s only dreamed,
but far more

real?

The Burning Ones

On 2019120920191209 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems5 Comments

I sat and watched the burning ones.
They came in twos and threes:
The night was their intoxicant,
And ardor, their disease —

I see them, too, in memory,
They’re everywhere about —
For when you are a burning one,
You’re destined to

Go out

… the end of all of this

On 2019112920191129 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

Here is the end of all of this:
most of us, one day,
will lie in a room where the shadows grow,
with memories crowded out by pain,
knowing, only then,
why we lit so many fires…
Just to keep these very shadows at bay.

Days we spend as interlocking cubes,
silver and shiny, neat and trim,
lost in the patterns of our illusions,
pushing chaos beneath the surface;
but look — down a hall you’ve already walked,
there’s a bed and pillow you’re going to use…
And you’ll be joined to all the people who used it before

The Life That I Remember

On 2019100620191005 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

The life that I remember
Is like a falling star,
So brief, and so ephemeral,
And only viewed afar —

The life that I remember
Had meaning, I recall —
But flashed so short, it seems
Like it was never there

At all

Autumn Ride

On 2019100520191005 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

Mother, daughter, side-by-side,
Colors of an autumn ride,
Soon to leave, the nascent bride,
For so long, her mother’s pride.

How the colors change and fade,
How we the see the day arrayed,
One has gone, and one has stayed,
Moments, though, we’d never trade —

Daughter, mother, father, son,
In the end, we’re left as one,
What is good can’t be undone
By mere setting of the sun —

You Were Happy Then

On 2019091420190914 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments

You hadn’t come as far as you have now,
Or seen the many things that you have seen;
You hadn’t found out who you really are,
A thing you found out in the years between

But you might trade all that, and maybe more;
All those amazing places you have been –
For yes, much ignorance has been erased,
But heaven knows it:
You were happy
Then