If only the life's sidewalks
  Were like people movers
That quicken our pace,
   Soften our steps, and carry
Our baggage for a while.

How great that would be…except

The machine would choose our
   Path unless we got bored and
Decided to carry his own baggage
   And set out on his own.

So I guess a short trip through the
   Airport is okay, but I think I’ll make the
Real journey under my own power.

Somebody died today, a cop in spite of which he’d always been my friend.
But they all were then when hate wasn’t the password and
Niches didn’t outweigh the Lady with the scales.

Think that isn’t true?
I was there then, a lawyer and a prosecutor
And there was so much less to be ashamed of in how it was done…

My friend who died was there too and he did it right
Then taught others to do the same.
When he left, things changed.

People somehow became categories and the law forgot Justice
So, things got bitter and that spawned something worse;
We’re living though that worse stuff now and for those who were there
Then looks so much better than now.

He knew how to do it and he did it for as long as they gave him breath
Now he’s probably doing it still on another level someplace.

Hopefully, it will trickle down.

Safe journey home, captain.

The sun will come up tomorrow,
the flowers will grow in the spring,
May love abound in your life and
peace to your soul may it bring.

Early fall colors are matted down. flags are dead, stuck to their poles.
People hustle as they walk bent over in hoods that hide their faces.

Hours ago there was the sun and warmth, pretty leaves, smiles.

Hours before that I was young and the sun never went down.

Then my rains started and my head went down.
The rain left lines as it ran down my face
I couldn't walk as fast, I hid inside from storms that always found me.   
Faces I knew turned down to avoid the rain,
I cannot see them now from here except in pictures
Taken when the sun shone and we all could smile.

Yet there is a fire in our hearth and one face that smiles
Though she too had been out in the rain
Until we came in together and found a place to keep warm.
In that the rains have served us well.

He’s hooked to tubes and monitors;
They speak to him hoping he will hear.
People test and probe reducing
Him to an experiment in a bizarre
Science fair where the best result is disability.

They cry for him, hope for him, pray for him
As the machines, hum, pump, and chime
To keep whatever he will be now alive.

I cannot see him there, but I remember
Days on football fields when we were young
Nights at dances with girls who teased us
In the clinches and sent us home alone.

He sold me my first car and we got old together
But not gracefully, not us.
We struggled against who we were
Trying to be who we thought we could become.
Failing and succeeding as we went;
Always friends who sometimes fought.


So much I remember as I lay here,
Safe until it’s my turn, and I wonder if he
Remembers who we were in that awful place where
They pray and hope to save what’s left
Of a good man’s life.

How many were there?
Who were they all?
Where are they now?

Why can't I remember everyone who
was important to me?

And why have so many forgotten me?

Then I think of Life beyond myself and how
Things change to meet the seasons
And the challenges of fate.

I recall discussions of how successful
Species adapt and evolve and go on
And I’m struck by the realization
That Life means my life too, though
I find no comfort in that.

And in moments like these
I find miss them all, even the ones I can’t remember.

Some nights I stand at the deck rail
To watch the day burn out across the lake.
Behind me darkness devours the remnants of the
Waking world; transforming what we know
Into things we fear.

The waves, here all my lifetime,
Are gone leaving only the
Growl and hiss of an angry, unseen beast.

The flaccid light of the moon is no help
As it sends shadows like twisted beings from
A nightmare racing from structures
I thought could be trusted.

Even the wind blows colder, sending a shiver
Down my back as I stand tense in the belly of the night

I think, therefore I am not digested by night…
Unless the morning fails, as one day it must.
I hope this is not be what the endless will be,
I want what the nuns promised.

No one builds a life, we survive
for a time in that sea by
swimming through currents where
random pieces of flotsam and jetsam
keep us afloat for a time then sink,
or move on,
leaving us to swim again, looking for land
that does not exist in the form we seek.

For moments settle on islands until they
no longer sustain us or
the sea rises up and washes us out into the currents
swimming to survive,
but in the end we cannot.

The best we have of the sea are memories
of what we hoped for and the dreams
we dream when we sink below the waves to sleep.

Just about everyone likes ice cream
You can please some people with chocolate, some vanilla,
except for people who  might like fro yo,
among them the ones who like chocolate or vanilla
unless they want sherbet.  

Or maybe you can leave them to their choices
And try to please yourself.

You feel it first with a sense left over
From when we lived in trees,
The force of it gathering miles away makes you aware.
Across the lake darkness falls in the afternoon
The waves grow short white manes
As they come now more quickly to the shore.
The temperature drops and a fresh breeze
Leads the way for black clouds that boil and gather
Coming now, coming harder, smothering the sun.
Beneath them is the dark veil of the rain marching.
You can smell it as it advances, a force men could
Never stop.  It comes, leaving a million scars on the water
In explosions adding volume to the noise of the waves.
The wind comes hard and I stand holding
The rail on a deck above the lake when
The first bolt sears the sky and roars.
I close my eyes and the rain washes over me
So cold there are no thoughts, just the
Feeling that for a moment I am clean.

I never understood the those left behind
Until I became one.
Trust and love are live in the dictionary then
And loneliness presses in like the cold, empty depth of a well.

But when I was abandoned, no one counted on me
Like the little ones whose mothers struggle
With their pain and have to keep moving…

They wear a mask through the day and have shoulders to carry
The load of two and they cannot falter
Lest the small ones fear and suffer the loss of
Of all that was left.

But at night the mask is off and the dark void
Fills places where pieces of life are missing.
Love is gone, the bed is empty, the money gone and
No one is there for warmth.

I never knew that part, but I know one who did
And she is strong in all the broken places,
Though how I'll never know.

And you who read this and suffer, know that she
Lives in your mirror if only you look.

There is a baby here resting in his mother's arms as she stands in a long line
Of people waiting to be fed.  The mother looks like a child herself;
The burden of the baby seems too much for her-but she knows he is not
As she sways and nuzzles
Him for comfort in a place full of strangers.
He looks at me, an old man in the corner smiling at him, and
Wishing for things long gone and time spent foolishly

Then he turns away to the comfort of his mother's powerful arms,
Safe for now in a moment fading quickly to a time when he
May be an old man in a corner wishing.

Her face was an indifferent mask
As I questioned her about
The child she was surrendering.
She confirmed the neglect
As if she forgot to feed a dog.

We went on together playing
The unfeeling ***** and the annoyed
Young lawyer feeling the power
Of who he thought he was.

The questions narrowed and
She fidgeted, then squirmed, then
A few tears leaked and the boy
Playing lawyer woke up
When he saw what I was doing
And how I was doing it.

He fought me with thoughts of
Our mother, and pity, and mercy;
But the lawyer had to continue
Even if his voice lost the condescension.
He went on as the girl playing *****
Began to sob then fell apart
When she said, “Yes,”

The boy became a man
Who has never forgiven the lawyer.

I knew better, I’d been warned
By people I trusted.
But I ignored them thinking
They just didn’t understand.

How could they know this moment
Of mine when the apple seemed
So close and looked so ripe.

They couldn’t see her there
Half in the shadows watching me.
Who else but me felt my frustration
And the buzz of alcohol that enhanced it?

Oh, I knew who she was, where she’d been.
I know what she’d done and with who.
I even know she talked about it
So she could ruin the lives she’d never have.

But I was angry, a little drunk and had
Been rebuffed for a sin I didn’t commit
And couldn’t remember, which was a worse sin.
So I slammed a few doors and left.

Now here she was, my real sin
Waiting for a decision.

I drained my glass and stared at it
Convincing myself to step outside
Who I said I was and swore to be…

Then I turned and I saw her
Walking away, holding the hand
Of a man whose face I couldn't see.

She smiled looking back then shrugged
And I felt an impossibly heavy weight
I had not been aware of
Fall off my shoulders.

The big clouds came back today,
Rolling up over the western horizon in full sail.
Fleets of them.  An Armada reconnoitering in force
For General Winter, who is in the rear waiting for
The campaign season to attack.

Softly they sail on winds that brought the hummingbirds
Then turned cool as the days shortened and the sun more scarce.

I cannot turn away though I know what is coming as we all know.
I find I no longer care that it comes for me.
I spent my spring unheeding and my summer foolishly
But I have always loved the autumn, which is fading into
Memories I shall carry into the cold winter I cannot escape.

I wonder will I have them there or if there is anything at all.

They are derelicts now in a lonely
Part of town even stray dogs avoid.
Broken, defiled, empty of the lives
Who made them roar and slam with
Machines building a nation, then defending it

Now they are empty, their purpose evicted
Then sold to lower bidders from lands they had to conquer;
Places making lesser versions of what they built with pride

The people they held bore children who
Prospered from what they made then
Shunned the labor which elevated them

But decay can’t change what they were
There are signs of it everywhere
Frescoes and cornices, brickwork and
Fading symbols defying the abandonment
Forced upon them

It strikes me now how similar we are

Somebody posted your obit and
The name seemed familiar.
Then others followed with how they missed you.
Turns out we went to school together.
And I can't remember your face
Or when we spoke to each other
Or the last time I saw you.

We lived lives with no intersection
And not even a remembrance even though
We went side by side through times
That made us who we are.

I like to think we were friendly,
But how could that be?
I would have remembered you face when they told me
And I remember nothing except your name was familiar.

So why do I feel a loss?

Home, sick with the winter that
Is trying to **** me being held at bay
By a fire in the corner hearth.

I’m safe as long as it lasts,
So I stir it, and feed it, and draw
Out the fire’s life as if it were my own.

But there is only so much one can do.
In the end they say even the stars will burn out
Overcome by the cold, endless dark.

But that means nothing now, there is only
This fire I have been given to guard
And appreciate.

I wish I had always been so wise.

I live in the corners now where the light is a reflection
and the shadows are real:

The comforting shadows of what was and the
painful shadows of what was expected.

My corner is crowded with transients, like me, pulled
slowly or fast, into the farthest nooks where they are
finally lost to the ephemeral light of here and now.  

It's hard to remember some of them, glad they are gone in fact;
Others are seared in my consciousness, smiling there as when
we shared the light that seemed everlasting as the sun.

But not even the sun is forever.

So I look for something beyond the nooks where my friends
and loves and dreams have gone.

I will tell you, who are still in the light, truly from the shadows
of the corner: only love and hope and Love will mean anything
when you reach this place.

And you will be here too soon.

There is this fish who shares my office
I feed him and he has certain rules:
No noisy exchanges with the crab,
(the crab is territorial so this must be hard for the fish)
No staring at me, though I can stare at him,
and above all
No criticism of what I do.

He is my friend because he does these things perfectly

My other friends are mostly human
My best friend is a woman who married me
They are not like the fish, which gives me trouble sometimes
I give them trouble too, I think,
But it usually works out.

When it doesn't, I always have the fish
And if he's too busy, there is the plant in the corner
Who has stood by me for years.

The world was a tapestry hung on simple pillars once.
They taught us how to see our place in it, what to do, how to act
Who we were supposed to be.

But we never saw behind the curtain
Where things never considered were boiling
And caught us one by one to change what was promised.

Who was prepared not to be loved, or for failure
Or to survive the death of traditions and the
Acceptance of something once taboo to be the norm?

The tapestry has changed and all the nostalgia in
My heart can’t restore what it was.  
I can’t embrace it, but I have a tool to cope.

“Go with the flow, Jimmy,”
My mother said,
“Go with the flow”.

His stars were crossed at birth by the ones
Who conceived him.
She who used the act to hold the boy,
He who performed for his own pleasure;
Neither with a care for the son who was a consequence.
Both indifferent until they finally broke
And the son became a pawn in a hateful game between them.
Winner take all, and he was all there was

When he learned this he used it against them
So he  could get what he wanted from one or the other.
And he had never been taught to want healthy things.

They did not care, they each tried to buy him away from the other.
He raised the price each time it was paid
And they paid it yet again to punish the other with his fleeting loyalty.

He thought others would pay when he grew older and went into the world.
Because he knew nothing else; not love or kindness
or even reasonable restraint.
There was just the pretense of human feeling,
Enough to get his way.

He called me from jail today
A girl finally told him no.
She'll never do that again, nor will their unborn child.

At least this game stops here.

The game was created for us to play
As if we don’t care about the score;
Taking our satisfaction from the moments
We made hard plays look simple
And the simple ones look automatic.

When we fall, and we all fall, we
Take pride in getting up.
When we can’t get up,
Defiance redeems us from our failure.

In the end, we remember the plays
Not the wins and losses, because in the end
We all get carried off the field.

It is hard to say when she started disliking the
Girl in the mirror.
It was probably about the time they gave her braces.
Surely, she began to take only glances
When she got pimples her hair wouldn’t cover
Try as she did with different lengths and styles.

The worst of it started when her friends began
To round out and she stayed all lines and angles,
Like a child among young women discovering themselves.

It drove her inside herself,
Further from her friends, one of whom
Struck a devastating blow when the Girl overheard
Herself called a pimply stick
Just so a boy of dubious morals would laugh.

She started hanging the towel on her mirror then.
She told her mother it dried better that way.
The woman accepted this
And so the Girl in the mirror locked herself away.

Mirrors cannot show the heart or wit
Or the steadfast love within.
There is only the reflection of beauty soon gone
And cast aside for that.

If only the Girl could see beyond the pale reflection.

I washed ashore blind with anger after the storm of my life,
And met a girl who loved rainbows.  
She found me, though she wasn’t really looking, and
Called out to me cautiously; for
She’d lived through a storm of her own.
We learned to know each other through the distance
Between us, enjoying what we learned and suffering,
At times, from the jagged edges of what we’d been through.

Trust that has never been betrayed came first, then
Friendship, and love.  Then came something more
As these three aspects melded into a union greater than the
Sum of them.  Something comfortable, something
Warm; a companionship of spirits gained over two decades.
That will carry us above and beyond and away
Where pain is forgotten, and the warmth lasts forever.

I have not earned this, it was my luck when I was blind
That she could see the rainbows after my storm…

He was born the year Babe hit 61,
Baptized by the Great Depression,
And confirmed in the South Pacific;
They jokingly called him the Million Dollar Baby.
No one knows why
Because he was one of millions who did what
Was right in a time when if they hadn't
Our world could have gone wrong.

And they expected not even a pat on the back for doing it.
They were beautiful.
He was beautiful, my dad.

He carried me even when I was old enough to walk
No complaints, no expectations beyond that I would
Do the same for mine.

I tried, but didn't do as well as he had done for me.

Now the Million Dollar Baby sits in a geri chair,
Cared for lovingly by his youngest girl.
Fading like his memory of who he was and what he did

But I will never forget.

Heaven will be lucky to get him,
I was luckier to have been his son.

I was lost searching for things
I should have had…
Or so I believed
And the search took me past thresholds
I never would have crossed but the quest
became something alive, calling to me
at first then demanding when I gave it the power to do so
as the combination of desire and frustration
drove me past the limits of my mores…
And I was lost
And I was punished
And in the depths of that was
despair known only to the powerless who had once had power
then lost it to misuse.
In that pit reason returned and I knew the fault
was mine, so I prayed sincerely like a child.
Slowly time passed and I became who I was again.
But I was lost away from my world, your world, the world.

And then he found me, the one of ninety nine, and through the
instrument of those I had scorned he brought me out
to live among the world again.

I shall never go back, for in that pit I found the tools to know
What counted.

And I had it all along.

The good things vary depending on
Who you are, where you live, how you think
And what you want.

But somewhere underneath the value given variations
Is the invariable truth that life is a tragedy
In which we play a role defining what we believe it to mean.

Played for the moment or the geld, life bores.
Motivated by self, it fails to satisfy.
Driven by scorn or anger it is best not lived

Life’s brief play is the chance to share
The depths of us with those who
Lend meaning to our existence.

Played true, the tragedy can be endured .

The fog came in and cut the hard edges off Monday morning,
Which really didn't do much good because a cold rain
Fell through it and soaked down to my soul.

It is the kind of day when reality bends and
The big questions beg for answers,
Like where does the spark go when it leaves?

I mean we turn out the lights, but the beam travels
Endlessly, the fastest thing we know, to the end
Of what?

The universe?  Time? (Whatever time means compared to eternity)

So, the light in our eyes, where does it go when the power is cut?
Or am I supposed to accept, Dr. Hawking, the light we make
Rubbing two sticks together is superior to the light in us because we
Can't yet find the formula for sentience or measure
It's limits beyond what we can see?

Big questions, foggy, rainy Monday and I am alone
A week after the light went out in dad.

I expect he’s out past Jupiter by now, heading home.

He’s also right beside me, I can feel him, thank God.

There is a train beyond my window tonight.
Far away it is, too far to hear the wheels.
Only the whistle calls lonely in the night,
Reaching me here in my exile
From who I should have been.

How I wish I were among the passengers
Bolting through the night aboard a
Fate that couldn’t be derailed by foolish choices
Or missed opportunity…or fear.
Sliding past the landscape in the night
Sure of arriving where you belong.

In my memory I feel the sharp edges of
My Broken dreams and recall the times
When the train that carried me was still on time.
That was then, now I lay awake and listen
To the whistle in the night and imagine
What might have been.

She carries the weight of simple things
Forgotten people cannot carry for themselves:  
Where to sleep, staying safe,
How to eat enough without selling yourself.

She works in an office smaller than a closet.
There is a picture on her desk of the day they opened.
She stands between ragged people and
Smiling politicians wearing suits in an election year.
None of the suits has been back since, but she is here
Working among the lost souls and feeling guilty
For going to a home with heat, a bed, and food.

She remembers best the ones she loses,
And the rate of what she thinks of as her failure
Would drive her to quit if it were not impossible
To forget the next one who comes to her may be
The one who needed her most.

They don't call me often, but I always  know it's them
When the calls come late at night, or
At moments that pressures from every other part my life
Are unbearable-

That's when they call

With life or death issues
Who is sick or leaving their spouse or
-God forbid I ever get this one again-
In the hospital having failed a suicide?

They call me and I know in their voices
Things are either wrong or very wrong

And something takes over in me, a calm in my voice
A clear head as my heart, which they can't detect,
Races into overdrive and I have to sit or I will fall.

I listen and hear my words as if they were spoken by someone else
Clear they are, and soft, and loving
I wonder how because they come from a man who feels
The pain of his child as his own pain
Yet the words don't betray that…not so far anyway.

These are the times they listen to me without the dismissal
Of the young for the generation above them.
This is when I am Dad, not "the old man"
I weigh more during these calls but I lose more of me to them.

But I don't miss what I have given
Any more than my mother missed what she gave me.

I am here like I promised I would be. I have been sitting here for awhile now , remembering you. I wish so badly to be able to see you... To hear you.... Something.... Anything.

From the back yard it all appears normal and as though life is unchanged. It is anything but normal.

The roses.... They are still here. Untouched by time other than some weathering of the stems. How I hate those roses and what they represent.
I'll not touch them. But I will recall their meaning that day.

I want you to know I am so very sorry I was unable to be here for you that fateful day. I would do anything to change that. I am here now and I am not leaving. I will stay here for you, knowing there is nothing I can do to bring you back.

It's 6. You would be home. It's already happening... And no one can stop the horror of your last minutes. It hurts so bad knowing what you had to endure. Remembering the aftermath.

So much left unsaid, undone.... So much life you had yet to live snatched away in a cowardly display of power, control, and pure venom.

It must be nearing that time. I am beginning to feel you. I am beginning to get chills up my spine. The breeze has picked up some. A sparrow went hopping around in your roses.

I should be sitting out here with you. Not sitting out here remembering you. Fires, chatting, watching the kids play as they were growing up...so many memories flooding back all at once. So heart wrenching to know they will never be more than memories ever again.

You should be popping out of the back door and sarcastically asking me, "Why aren't you coming in Chrissy? Too lazy to take your shoes off or what ? " Then would be that laugh.... I loved that that laugh. No more picking back and forth. No more joking around. No more funny sarcasm. No more anything. It's all no more.

I pray where ever you are now that you are happy. That you can still hear and see us all. That you know how deeply we miss you and love you. That you know you will never be forgotten. And that you know I am here today.
I love you so much Deb.

He was a good kid once,
All smiles and personality that set him apart.
"A pleasure", his teachers said;
"A funny boy, but so smart"!
He was first among his friends and loved by family in those days.

But those days pass and life wears you down.

Romances failed him, or vice versa,
The big leagues never called,
And work was never interesting, just work.

Always his escape from what should have been was in the ****
    Which got inside his head and changed him.

Frustration twisted him as years passed and dreams dimmed;
Every change was a loss he took as something stolen.
He didn't see he gave away what he lost,
        So he wanted revenge on us because we couldn't help him.

His actions hurt us,  but not how he thought it would,
        We suffered to see him become the God who banished himself To the hell of his anger where the Satan he became
        Keeps him locked away in lonely frustration.

He was a good kid once,
All smiles and personality that set him apart.
"A pleasure", his teachers said;
"A funny boy, but so smart"!
He was first among his friends and loved by family in those days.

Now he's gone and can't find his way back.

And I miss him.

I was born in a red brick hospital
when doctors still came to the house
and nurses were nice older ladies of 35.

The town was small but large
enough for us to play together
while our parents had coffee
without worrying who had invited whom.

Good things, happy things went on then.
The proud men worked the plants
while our mothers made our homes
and no one said either was the lesser.

I grew up in this believing the life was endless.
Then the town got big and the people shrank.
Concerns became fears and fears reality.
Today I saw a bulldozer destroy the old hospital.

It was many years too late to do any damage.

Long ago the tree was strong and green,
But that was when the air was clean
And the water that fell as rain was not tainted.
So it grew and ignored what was happening
Reaching only for the constant sun that gave it life.

It slept through winters and sprouted every spring
As the earth turned and lesser lives were lived and lost
Always turning its branches to gather the light
Sinking deeper its roots to stand taller,
Time moved slower for the tree, but it moved nonetheless

It moved.

The weakness came slowly, creeping into its roots
From the soil that caught the tainted rain
Its leaves were less each season, less light was gathered
The winters grew longer and more brutal
He could not reach so high, though he tried.

And the time came when no leaves grew, but he was not gone
He stood his ground with bare arms stretching still
For the sun, who had never left him.
He stands there now, not forever, but long enough
For us to see the haunting beauty of a life now gone
Who in his time was a giant.

I thought I would be different today
I expected midnight this morning would have wrought a change
In me like Cinderella's coach that turned into a wrinkled pumpkin
Leaving her to walk home from the ball.

But that didn't happen.

Midnight struck this morning and the gentle heart and
Glowing soul who lies beside me through every lonely night
Reached back, pulled my face close to hers and said,
"Happy birthday, I love you".
Then she kissed me and I was young all over again.

We work together in the day,
But it isn't Us that rumbles through cases
And put out fires and deal with unreasonable people,
It is our lawyer avatars doing what must be done.

I see you though in moments…

It is not Us who do what we can to blend families
Who do not recognize the concept of family as
Applied to them in the context of you and I,
It is our ever hopeful avatars straining at them and each other.

I see you though in moments…

In the night when we are alone, or when we play and laugh,
And always when we touch,
I see you then and clearly and I know this is Us
That survived the rest of it to find each other
And travel together in love.

Waiting for a biopsy result can be its own kind of hell
because you can't be sure whether time
will bring you something good or **** you.

It's not that I fear death yet, even though I know I will,
it's the anticipation of the death process ripping me down
from the inside out while people I love are sorrowful
and try to be brave for me.

And yet, the answer time is hiding could be life
full and warm and wonderful and long,
which is to say death will use a slower process to claim me
and those who love me will have more time to watch
as I fade to the Place we all must go.

It strikes me then these moments, even now
as I bare my soul to you, are something
to be enjoyed rather than spent in dread of what time could bring,
for the ultimate result has never been avoided.

He sends us here for a moment
When the best of us burn with desires and needs
And the drives to light the world.

Others hang back in the dark,
Content with the anonymity of the blackness,
Comforted by letting leaders lead;
Even false ones whose excesses force them
Out to make things right again
So they can drop back into the limbo
Of ordinary lives where soaps and football reign.

And we do it all in moments,
Blazing time that is to short to count
From the stars.

Never quit they told me early in my life,
Push yourself, do what you're told, you'll be rewarded.

Now I look back over their spectral shoulders
And ask where is the reward?

They look at me blankly over the years and I elaborate,
Where is the reward I have been promised?
I am older now, older than you were when you set me in motion,
Older than you lived to be and here I am tied to a life
That did not live up to the promises you gave.

For all my effort,
I did not climb to the top of the mountain,
I do not live in a mansion,
There is no plaque with my name for people to admire,
There is only me and I am often lonely even when I'm not alone.

Having said this, I recalled my mother's eyes and saw her again
Standing there with the amused grin she wore
Just before she told me why I was wrong.

Around her I saw other things from the years that passed.
I felt again what I had done and what I had lived

I knew again the things that made me smile
And those that made me cry.
I saw my children and their children
And will probably see the next to come.
I felt my pains, my loves, my losses and my triumphs.
My friends reached out to me, even those who were gone for years
Embraced me and gave me warmth.
I met my wife again, my true love, and lived our moments over.
I felt my frustrations and my angers,
But they didn't weigh as much now as they had then,
Neither did the scorn of those who had their triumphs over me
For many of them are gone now, some ingloriously
While I plod on into an age they'll never know
With memories they'll never have.

My mother smiled from her distance.
She had always known me best and now she knew what I had seen.
She placed a hand upon her heart and waved as
She faded gently back to the place I will call my home.

This life was my reward and more than I deserve.

I was driving the back roads from my house
out in the country where things are real;
they live, they die, they make noise and they move
in the way Nature intended.

The road bumped under my wheels because it wasn't paved,
dust flew up behind the car, but fresh air came in my window.
The sun was going down a bit, so the horizon in my rearview mirror
was a beautiful orange blaze which gave me peace.

And for some reason I wondered when it would come.

I've been waiting for as long as I knew it existed
though when I was younger the wait seemed so long
the coming seemed more fantasy than reality,
time changed that perception as did experience and loss.

Now I know it's closer.  Thank God I can't feel it near yet
but I know it's closing in and I wonder when it will arrive;
I also wonder whether it will be swift and merciful
or if it will play with me and make me suffer
and force me to be brave
I'm not brave, you know.  I'm just stubborn
and I like to fight battles I am not supposed to win.

Then I wondered if fighting would be worth it
because all I want, all I need, is to be a part of this out here
a piece of what is real, which is why my peace will be as
scattered dust riding on the wind to find my place
in all of this beautiful, sacred, loving nature.

I wonder when it's coming.
          Some days i don't want to wait.