Meet me, once again, at the breakwall
where we will spend time sitting
reminiscing about times we spent wishing
on a sinking star for more time to spend.

Let’s go fishing for our selves
in snapshots of past lives
and see if we can find,
in this murky water of nostalgia,
some kind of definition.

We will quest forth, finding more questions
than answers, and accepting them
with a peaceful resignation
we could never have in our raging youth.

I’d talk about how
we used to debate
with our words
carved into primitive weapons
for savage discussion -

To win arguments with each other
doing battle for days
not realizing that language
was not evolved for the purpose of combat
but rather, the opposite.

We’d watch the waves wash ashore
all the places and people we’d been
all the bits and pieces of past tragedies
will lay before us
like a thousand-year-old shipwreck.

We will laugh together
the way you do,
when you see the heavy black clouds
storming off toward a distant somewhere
and they seem smaller somehow
less frightening.

You’d say something about how
we were the most obsessed with our mortality
when we were furthest from ever facing it.

And we’ll sit there for a while
just thinking about that.

in Ohio state, that place by the lake
I miss those waves and that sandy grate
my dreams are laced with memories made
waiting for a walleye to take my bait

on Edson street, down at the creek
I leaped in just to wet my feet
where steelhead and salmon meet
it's still a dream my memory keeps

Main street beach, out on the pier
we drank in life and drank down beer
we swam to the breakwall without fear
those memories, i still hold dear

We are
on the forefront
of a revolution.
Our generation
holds the key
to eternal peace.
We are
the rising tide,
the ones
that will shift
the tipping point
of our world.
We will
ride the wave
to a new millennia,
or let it crash
against
the breakwall.

We have a choice.

Be the lighthouse
that shines
through the storm,
or repeat history
in one more
****** war.

What will you stand for?

Tonight Ill lie awake waiting for the reprieve of sleep that will never come. My eyes will bore holes in the night sky for stars. Like a moth eaten blanket that covered up the outside light. My heart will sink to the center of the earth like stones and heavy metals. Arms crossed hugging myself so tight. Thoughts twist and curl through my mind like the dark waters in the sound. I’m sitting upon the breakwall that I’ve built, held steady by the mortar of my past life. Prior planning leads to stable landings.

The water leaked into the cracks that you made. I sandbagged but it meant nothing. It was like dutch fingers in cracking dams. Contents pouring out to water Holland’s tulips.

I held steady so long but recent lapses in judgement left me open and waiting.

This time, like the last, I read the weather report wrong. Sunny days relapse into clouds and rain. My stray into meteorology took me down dark streets at night passing empty parks with vacant swings and lonely slides. Houses filled with slumbering occupants. Tired streetlights lighting up void roadways like ancient nightlights. Somehow I managed to find my way home. Back to where I’ve always been. Stagnant between the surf and the cliff face, I sink to swim

Drug along my gratitude
through the open doors
of wisdom.

Found myself stepping
into a world painted
in blackness.
With only dim city
street lights to dye the
air faded shades of
green,yellow
and red.

Far off in the land
of memory rainbow slicked
Harbor waters lap at ancient
breakwall  stones like slow
rhythmic veiled maidens.

I count the blue lights along
that familiar span across
the fuel laced waters.

Then all at once
I pull myself from
yesterday and back into
the golden light of Nimrods
dawn.

I return to what is no longer
blackness.

It comes to me that another
tomorrow has already arrived
a day worth of hours ago.

There’s a little white church
in Barcelona
Not far from the lighthouse
overlooking the bay
It’s where I spent
my Bible school summers
and sometimes Christmas
in a Sunday school play

We'd walk to the smoke house
down on the shore
Savor some soft ice cream
from a nearby stand
Run out on the breakwall
that sat in the harbor
Greet the fine sailboats
with a wave of the hand

There’s little so dear
to my precious memories
than this cozy warm village
of my childhood days
Where everyone gathered
for dinner at grandma’s
Can someone please pass
the potatoes this way?