Age is a home observed from a fixed perspective; as distance grows, the place gets smaller more difficult to live in – alien.
I have no choice but to be where I am now, find a way to live in that diminishing space. that sounds like enough.
“enough” – a limit defined.
When the time comes to pursue that definition If anything is wrong I’ll remember (my family)
These strangers with years between fly by night fair weather friends, receipts with formal education could tell me anything but, life insurance pays out five times my salary
So, I’ll ask “How much will my life cost me?” and we’ll laugh and laugh.
Cataracts hobble- but won’t blind atrophied eyes that see never suffer enough to stop looking guided by shadows and stubbornness vindicated by the rising sun.
In that maze of coherency success looks like an ending with no beginning
harsh edges dulled by confidence affirmation is all that remains regard that I can see enough to know I once saw better despite this the result is the same
Young dreams will the soul inspire; all the insides set to fire tied to hopes by length of wire leading us through years most dire to be enough to admire through the glow of our desire. Thus breaks the mold of our birth at last of worth, we retire.
When I was …this tall the world was exciting a cosmos of wonder and potential
Not the void we know now.
At first, I knew nothing… but then then I was adrift in everything
I wanted to BE everything.
I could hardly function with all that was going on but I persisted
Experimenting
Reaching out and grabbing at…
Until somewhere out there calling out to me through the possibilities I heard a jarring word,
“Don’t”
And I didn’t, because what did I know? nothing.
And this was everything, right? So, when I heard don’t I didn’t. And the world got a little bit smaller a little quieter a little dimmer.
But I could see more clearly.
Here there were “dos”
And over there were the “don’ts”
And between the two no roads shall meet.
When I was …this tall
I was given a small page, to jot it down map it out define this space I found myself in,
There had become so many don’ts that the task became like working in negative space, snatching out the do’s from the soup of don’ts, and now I had enough understanding to find them on my own
I thought anyway
Until I shared that page with others proud of all the things I would do, my ability to navigate the sea of don’ts
And was told, again, “no
Don’t”
When my do’s would not line up with their expectations, they became a whole new kind of don’ts. shouldn’ts I called them.
Irresponsible, you may have heard them called. not productive.
And so the world became a little bit smaller a little quieter a little dimmer.
Now that I am …this tall,
I have progress reports, project plans financial projections,
Ways of tracking do’s but not ever truly acknowledging them, a piling on of do’s into a stack I have no choice but to call “will do’s”
I still hear that voice calling out to me from that growing void:
“No, don’t, not yet.”
But more and more it is starting to sound like my own, indiscernible even.
The world is small, quiet and dim, adrift in the cosmos mostly empty space.
Do not presume to find our end in fire reduced we are to subtle heat obscured. Look not for bombs, like rain from clouds, perspired for there is shelter in the war endured. Seek not your reason wrent from mind retired that sank beneath the waves of years matured. Best let the end become the pray unknown no part of life will find our deaths postponed.
“You can’t see it through the rust but there’s a real nice car beneath there,” my father would say with a smile; that expectant grin that invites you in. It doesn’t make you tea or coffee but it will gladly show you around.
His calloused hands covered in oil would read the pocked surface like braille blues and browns hiding brighter memories that he could somehow see clearly though he would rarely articulate.
If you were patient enough however you’d see it in his youthful eyes trapped in a cage of years indiscernible, a child was there, lost amongst trees though grateful for the forest.
He’d send another gulp of coffee down and nod in respectful silence as if all of us had agreed on something. To be fair, even when we didn’t, I wish we had. It always felt good to share a destination with him to hop into the front seat and just let him drive; rust be damned.
What ends will begin again the distant observer reminds me hidden in shadow their eyes reaching out with their own light metal things – sharp like ice seeing me fully; where presence, thought, and action coincide all the moments in between.
A brutal transparency that turns the veins to stonework.
We lock eyes over long, each of us throttled by the others gaze only one of us haunted by it, until the day ends and a new one begins.
In the morning
I will wake to see myself staring once again eager, but patient to take my place to see through these eyes rather than the emotionless space.
A strange beast hides amongst the trees waiting patiently while the world – the world grows around it. Cradling it, in flora and fauna, until that darkness is unrecognizable …only the foul stench remains.
Above, the clouds break- the sun stretches again, the errant thought of that rot abandoned to the weeds, the corruption it hides left in the soil
far beneath. The day continues with a calm wind…
A late summer afternoon will find many friends in the forest- weaving through the green in waves of shadow and tufts of grass; The harsh sun a gentle hand reaching through the canopy combing the coat of the earth.
It pauses a moment when brushed against that malignance;
that strange beast that hides amongst the trees born of those it never sees
Grow Gray With Me 