Sunday, February 7, 2021

in memorandum

As if the air has weight beyond its allotted place

Pushing down, crushing, seeping in like bile compressed into the soul's space

And I remember each tear, remember each silent torment

I remember the invisible crush of the words unsaid yet left to foment

I felt your eyes, your accusing eyes

Placing that letter, scarlet, around my neck

Judging and quietly moving in the dark to punish 

And draw out malicious vengeance

For the crime of sight.

Sight that lays bare the ugly taking

Lays bare the greed and sickly sweet wakings

I saw you and you hated me for it.


I threw myself to karma, to truth.  I walked on

Though the thorns and daggered blades of your morass pulled at me I trudged on

To find myself, eventually, stepping out in that far place

The same man, but changed.  Missing parts, others bulging and strange

But always the strength is defined by the absence, yes?

The cup cannot take in more without spilling, yes?

And, in that bit spilt, though it is well spent,

Some piece is too melded in to the offall to be kept

And I must look with longing and see that bit of me bereft.


Thus I sit, long after your hooks have torn free

Long after your darts and arrows no longer reach me

Though you, no doubt, still feebly cast them about

Unaware of their pitiful reach, their impotency.

Yet....sitting here and remembering,

I feel them just the same, 

Though the part of me they tore has long since succumbed to entropy.

Thursday, February 4, 2021

moments

 A soft, chill embrace, the midnight wind 

Touching, whispering a comprehensible sensation that leaves the skin flushed and tingling.

And the yip of coyotes calling to one another in a frantic cacophony,

The distant splash of waterfowl, the bovine lowing, bringing a life into the cold night.

Stars beyond counting wink down as if to co-conspire on the cold dirt road.

It culminates, it amalgamates itself into this,

A moment.  


Fleeting, quickly passing into the fading ether of the past,

Yet imprinted now.

Edges fuzzy in recall, the details vaguely lost, yet the moment remains.

Long after the path is spent and days have changed, it will remain.  

Indelible on the canvas of the soul,

As much a feeling as an image, perhaps more so.  


And this moment, this hazy snapshot in time,

It is to be cherished, to be coveted.  

Long it will offer respite.

When the whirlwind of the people and places that tear at us all leave the soul tattered and trembling,

Deep into the quiet vaults of the soul one looks and draws it out.

Tattered from wear, from the frequent caress of gentle memory

It, the moment, will bring warmth against the cold.

Will bring peace against the raging chaos.

And in time, if we are wise,

We will see.  

Life is not beautiful because it is punctuated by these moments.

Life is beautiful because it is lived in these moments.  

Guard the moments.  Seek them out.  Live them in memory over and again.

For when the curtain closes, those moments will be all we really ever had.