for Richard, the boy who narrated life*

Today, leaves are falling.
“One day Aaron will watch the falling leaves.”
The first day of school arrives.  
“One day Champ’s mom will take him to school.”

Life is the story of life, says the narrator.

Life expands. The story lengthens.
The intertwined threads begin to pull apart.

Life is surface and sheen,
laughter, tears, opaque signs.
The story strains after fictive frames,
the hero’s epiphany, the villain’s inner pain,
and undreamt creatures beyond human sense.

And so myth and magic
give form to stories
that we no longer star in.  
New worlds take shape
where the story creates its own life,
an escape from "the shock of recognition."

In time the threads converge again.  
Life’s pattern breaks and needs a new plot.
The stories yield their human meaning—
maybe we were in them all along.

The story ends and life goes on.
Life ends and the story goes on.

Swarming:  bees above a skylight.
Breath forming:  a child asleep in fading light.

Innuendo:  eyes when a kiss ends.
Before crescendo:  the audience as the curtain descends.  

Age:  a handwritten journal from a wandering liar.
Exhausted rage: Slauson Avenue after the Rodney King fire.

Utility: a brown wooden desk with empty drawers.
Apostrophe: an oration delivered near crashing shores.

A life destroyed:  an Olympia typewriter covered since 1975.
The void: a poem read aloud, addressee not alive.

This lighthearted word that makes you want to look up
to see the allure and intrigue that the sky holds

Every collection of soft, fluffy whiteness opens the door
to another portal for the imagination

They shift expand and disperse like most things in life
with a much faster pace

I watch as they gently meld into one another
Then fade into blue
the grandest magic show I have ever seen

And off on the horizon
this sumptuous mound
seems to grow from the core
of the planet

Reaching higher with more light and luminance than all the rest combined I watch as it coats the sky for as far as the eye can see

Wrapped in the glorious hues of the setting sun
in the midst of heaven
I see you

I thought this park would stay the same
since I first set foot in its early green,
when it was new.  I didn’t know its name.  

Now the baseball diamond’s seen its last game.
They sodded the basepaths and took out the screen.
A field without a backstop just isn't the same.

The stone fountain sits dry in its frame
of red cement.  Once water gurgled clean,
and tasted new like a secret name.

This sloping dirt path was how I came
Home from school.  It was paved by a machine
When I thought this park would stay the same.

The box elder with the split trunk’s now maimed.
Half of it’s gone. I used to hide between
Its arms. It gave refuge I could not name.

Yet the vision of a place time can’t claim--
Spared in a quiet corner, unseen--
Persists.  So I dream this park stayed the same,
Though now it no longer remembers my name.