Whenever you think
That you might just wanna
End it all right now
Look in to your
Future
There are a thousand
Different roads to take
1,000,000,000
Way to
Go
Not all of them
Are pretty
Not all of them
Are easy
Not all of them
Are grand
But all of them are yours

What make you alive, you ask.
Answer:
Despite what scientists say,
What logic says,
It is not the organs or your,
Pulsating heart,
That makes you truly alive.
What brings life to a person,
Are their feelings,
Their emotions, memories, and dreams.
Feelings of lust and misery and jealousy,
And anything else one might encounter.
How they have lived,
What they have done,
And what they remember.
How vivid their dreams are and if they dream at all.
No, the heart and the body does not play,
A part in sincere living,
Unless the heart is capable of feeling.
Feeling is living,
And what is a person,
Without being able to truly live.
You are not fully alive if you're not truly living.

For Clemmie.

Long sand roads lead
to excitements with buckets and worn spades
crafting barriers to keep the sea away.

With baskets and cotton swimwear
we’d look into the eyes of each other,
lie next to each other,
be with one another.

For men will never drop the need to protect,
nest in the trees and wait for the seas:
the seas that’ll sweep up and rise in your lifetime and,
when they begin, no sewn sort branches will
save you from the swell.

Picnics made from grocery store vegetables,
ripened peppers flown in from
the greater somewhere.

Take to the skies, you’ll ask those in the know,
but they’re out of ideas before an answer materialises and is known and
snow won’t fall no more, just ice for our sidewalk commutes,
lovely and unfilled;
it’ll take a large span of time for a man to build a sand barrier worthy of note and fame.

*You take me back 63 years
every time I look at you.