The days are fading, fading into smoke;
I try, but I can’t hold them in my hands.
The fire’s gone, there’s nothing left to stoke,
Just empty parking lots, and barren lands —
The days are turning, burning into mist;
With just a shimmer there, or glimmer here —
The mill of time, that turns our loves to grist,
And fads, like life, that up and
Disappear
Photo credit : ID 3563443 Susan Leggett | Dreamstime.com
He sits down on the hardwood bedroom floor,
Examining the photos he just found.
Some of them he’d seen before, and he remembered
How old he thought these were when he was just a kid.
But now they seem alive, they seem to carry
Voices, times, and colors, colors hidden now by sepia,
That bleed in on the edges of remembrance
A clapboard house (he thought it saw its building)
His father and grandfather (you two smile!)
His father with his brothers (they were kids once)
His parents at a party (he could hear the big band music)
His father’s mother’s mother (that’s some hat!)
And all of it’s an arch, a great continuing
Connecting him and his to them and theirs
For our great chain of being lives in stories,
The stories we should tell and we should hear —
For life’s still there, it’s there among the fallen:
If we just hearken, ere they
Disappear
So off into the snow begins his day:
The old town’s still asleep, or mostly so —
Just melting ice and mud along the way,
And turns that catch the full winds as they blow
The make his progress more than slightly slow.
And it’s as though the village sits without
The changing ways that time is all about.
Ensconced in wool, a shovel in his hand —
A wooden handle, and a metal spade —
He starts to dig a path across the land,
And very sluggishly a way is made
Across flat ground, and up the valley grade.
But still, it’s though a hundred years ago
Came back, for all external things might show.
But what are we, but moments in a weave;
A woof of time, a warp of this and that,
And dash of hope and what we might believe,
To climb and to descend and span the flat
And dig our way through this, our habitat,
Inside a world where time is meaningless
To ponder what this all is
Teaching us
A castle stood upon the rise,
But long ago;
A glint beneath the sunny skies,
A golden glow
For childhood imagining
Had made it so:
To get it back is maddening.
The cold winds blow
Across the bleak, deserted field
Of yesterday:
Where knights who’ve lost their sword and shield
Just fade away
(Pronounced ᵻˈkwuːliəs)
Equuleus, that tiny horse of light,
Within an eye scan of Aquarius,
Is visible tonight from in this room
Amid its larger siblings in the sky.
I stand in wondrous silence at the sight,
And look for something poor, a kindred thing
To reconcile with how is that I,
So slight, have come to know how small I am.
The infinitely frigid stretch of space,
And time itself, which we don’t understand,
All congregating here, and through these panes
All our technology seems so much noise.
We pride ourselves, and preen ourselves to shine,
The dimmest flash in all these many lights —
We dine on hubris, feast on vanity,
And strut through mud and slime like royalty.
My friend, the tiny horse, you know my heart:
The small among the great, who’s always there,
And goes without the notice that attends
With having brilliance to the viewing eye —
Let me be one who knows what I don’t know,
May I bring kindness to this life, this ride –
And add my color to the chandelier
Of songs and lights and imperfections lived.
How many friends have you lost?
Oh, there’s many. More than you would know.
But, yet – I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot —
Oh, sure. But I’ve still far to go.
I’ve wandered many places, through
All seasons, through all climes —
And now I’m here – back home again,
Where I’ve been many times.
What keeps you moving, then?
Is it the next great view?
Oh, no. I’m simply out here,
Doing what it is I do.
You do not make it sound that great.
The way you make a living —
I know. The world’s a taking, and
A train is here for giving.
Forgiving? I need more of that.
I’m sure, my friend, you do.
Because the native fauna here
Depends a lot on you,
You need to do what all you can,
To carry where you’re able:
For life is long and lonely, and
No situation’s stable
For quite as long as we might think.
I think I understand.
You know the route you’re going, but things
May not go as planned —
I find today, I look around,
And many, loved, are lost —
I hurt who I don’t mean to hurt,
And some folks I exhaust —
The moving on’s the thing, I think.
It does not do to dwell
With our mistakes – missed chances – that
Becomes a prison cell.
But you are not imprisoned, you
Just need to find your track.
And will that lead me home?
I do not know. But don’t look back.
For much that was is lost for good,
And why, there is no knowing:
But life’s a journey, after all,
And so,
Go on —
Get going
