Rhododáktylos Ēṓs*

Good mornings,
rosy fingered promise;
front row ticket
to creation.

Bad mornings,
gray diluting black;
thundering kettle drum
of Armegeddon.

Both mornings,
exactly the same
morning.

Only one life
in which to awaken.

How can
our hearts survive
so many battles
when they
can never be
satisfied and happy
at the same time?

After a certain age,
morning becomes a relative term.

Three, four or six,
you wake up and get up.

Battle, marriage, divorce,
kids, lovers, fear:
sleep becomes a dream collage
projected in your weary skull.

The past lurks at night.

What remains begins again
when you awaken.

The two blend like a smoothie,
both bitter and sweet.

Lift the glass and drink it down.

It tastes like the only future
you have left, like the first
drink you ever took, like
the first time you ever kissed,
like another shot at awe.

It supplies the reasonless reason
that keeps you
plodding onward into the unknown.

The only place you can live

*now.

Here I stand, with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before.*

We die right now;
not in some alien future.
Some days, the sun shines.
Others the gloom gathers.
Wisdom is a fleeting moment.
Death does not defeat life.
Experience is the path
to transcendence.
Take it all in
before you can't.

Quis est iste puer?*

Not even the
sterile, serious
hospital scene
can diminish
the wonder.

Your wife
glows radioactive.

Something new
in this old world.

Love made flesh.

In her arms,
your child.

The Cosmos smiles.

Everything changes
forever.

Hoka hey.*

Each day a death and a loss.
Old friends, old lovers, old heroes.
A brain that draws a blank.
Knees that hurt. A back that aches.
Tentative steps down the Ghost Road.
An age of slowly letting go.
A time of things falling away
like leaves from an autumn maple.
Where we all go, in our own time.
A track through twilight to darkness
and then, we hope, into the light.

Wraiths pull strangers
into imaginary embraces
and pretend to feel
what isn't there.

Like butterflies and breezes,
some intimacies should
always be reserved
for the flesh.