To those restless souls,
to open eyes questing,
to empty arms,
and to full hands.
To open eyes questing:
may you find the horizon endless,
and always enough light to see.
To empty arms:
may you find the strength to carry
all the gifts that life can give.
And to full hands:
may you find empty arms
in which to give of your fruit.
It’s not trash, but it should be.
I want it to be,
but someone out there;
a memory,
would hold it against me,
that tangible though brief history
discarded.
as if it didn’t live up to
some archaic pedigree
that would otherwise sustain it
unto antiquity.
Is it not enough that we lived our lives?
Survived?
Survive still,
to store those moments in boxes
or lay them amongst the refuse
and save instead that space?
How do we value emptiness
against all the time that we’ve forgotten?
The day has settled
to find rest where it is wont to be,
speak softly, those closing remarks,
and resign to quiet darkness
with the dream of sunlight to carry it to morning.
The restless feign a closed eye
the other, a slivered lookout
waiting for the light to die
just enough to escape beneath the cool evening.
Some adventures can only be had
in the space between.
Like boulders tumbled end over
end
until hard sharp edges are rounded
soft
pebbles
that flow over the hand
as the water that birthed them.
Then ground into rich soil
vibrant, dark
eager to grow into something beautiful
to taste a set of lips
and rest there
taste again
and settle warmly inside.
Each morning
I embrace that glow
as it embraces me
and feel the day blossom.
I remember the road,
the air raging against us
while time refused to move.
My father wore driving gloves
absurd shorts
a proud mullet.
When we stopped for gas he’d take note:
He’d check the oil each time.
Spitefully, the car gave up before he did,
and for three days in Virginia
my sister and I waited for parts to arrive,
so he could fix it.
and we-
could get back on the road.
I remember he was always confident-
hopeful;
only ever briefly apologetic,
secreting his resentments away
to hasty whispers he alone could hear.
When we finally arrived in DC,
we had two days left to visit the smithsonian…
I can’t remember why I enjoyed it so much.
Here we hide our memories;
those lost, those forgotten
and those memorialized.
Most moments
will outlive their time-
processed,
so completely,
we want nothing to do with them anymore
but, the part of us that lives on-
in the brighter corners of that vacant space
will not be discarded.
Here we store them…
We place them in a box.
to cultivate dust and nostalgia,
for our future selves to discover,
swipe away;
trivialize.
Other events are so magnificent
they break the realm of time itself
piercing the boundaries of reality;
letting it bleed out
until its eyes dim
the skin pallid
fading
and we are faced with no choice but
to pack those away too.
here they rest patiently…
until there is enough room
for them to exist once again
or reality needs once again
to be reminded how fragile it is.
Coin operated
machinery in symphony
the spaces between
more than the emptiness there
a sense of belonging.
The air dissolves at night,
milky swirls of sorrowful clouds
lurching among street lamps
huddled close to the fitful flames
lapping at what warmth that drips down.
To stand before that raging tide and say, “no.”
the salt laden water rising to the throat,
confides in me such pride on which to bestow;
to sink beneath the waves and yet rise afloat.
For all the times that change found her overcome,
and would for others be enough to succumb;
for every kind word we have contemplated,
and all that we have yet to face.
A brown blanket draped over desert dunes,
the wind swooping in to pull at the threads-
cast the out like fishing lines, that
whisper of years beneath the skin,
breaching the surface timidly, here or there-
memories as winding paths into a future of
time sweeping into deep pools of darkness,
surrounded by sand blasted cold stone-
the blue of an ancient ocean petrified, like
a forest of artifacts from the day before,
some reposed in a past hardly spoken-
others greet the day screaming white noise at
the sound of a church bell at noon.
Tuesday- from the hollows of an old barn,
Struggling to live up to a repurposed dream.
Grow Gray With Me 