Wrong. Only death is immutable.The status quo today is yesterday’s news tomorrow.
Love is in the air this morning, gone by dusk. Your life’s plan rarely pans out.

Shape-forming, turbulence, flashes of lightning, skin grafts everywhere, children growing into tyrants.
The foundation crumbles, the trees felled, the virus mutates, the beliefs dissipate, corners clipped.

Rest assured that constancy exists only on paper, the future is untold, your prospects unknown.
Cross off everything on your list. Throw the list away. Float on air to your next destination.

They connect and divide us. Players and watchers with their separate symbols.
It’s game time every time, with winners and losers, no room for sometimes.
Blood action defines the fields. It’s a poetry of action and muscle in glorious hues.

Sport as war and war as sport. Boundaries, walls, bodies, and trophies define battle.
Rules of engagement written on wet cement. Crossing the line is pure showmanship.
Targets seen though myopic lenses that reduce them to pinpoints on the fields.

The weight of me has no force, no substance, no ballast.
Inconsistent, pandering, heckling, needful, shorn to the bone.

His is the salt of the earth, steady yet insistent, grounded to the earth.
Any spark of doubt doused without tension. Secure in his strength.

I fly without wings, look down for approval, wait for the storm’s end.
He looks up with eyes that say Don’t be fooled, I need you just as much.

I found an old ivory-decorated little box tucked away among her possessions.
The box was locked but easy to foil by a person determined to seek answers.
The old woman had a lived a charmed life full of money, travel, and whiskey.

She had worn her classical beauty as a haughty warning to all who came near.
An acerbic genius at inserting the dagger right into the softest spot with ease.
Her own soft spot was animals, the wilder the better. Her feral streak, I guess.

The box felt empty but it was hiding a small crimped note underneath the velvet.
I hesitated. My face in the above gilded mirror was not the face I depended upon.
Flashes of the old woman blurred my vision. I imagined the old cord between us.

The old cord, discarded continually. Seesawing between venom and disinterest.
No back-up plan, no come-to-Jesus moments, just an invisible border wall.
I can’t seem to breathe, the portentous air enveloping me as I read:
“I did the best I could. Mom.” I shut the box and put it back where it belonged.

That’s right. I want to call a halt to death, specifically the death of one person.
Please don’t assume that it is a loved one I want to see once again. Hell, no.
I want to face the evil of a person whom I have just learned was a meek monster.

Family secrets held close to the vest, a Roshomon story imbued with tragedy.
The blithe cruelty that forever tinged an already downward spiraling stage set.
Let me have my final say to the ******* too cowardly to stay alive long enough.

A pause here and then a modicum of calm comes over me. Breathe, breathe.
It’s too easy to get pulled back into the vortex, to relive what should never have been.
It’s all right now. And it’s all right now. The dead are deaf, and I’m alive. RIP, my rage.

Looking through the murky water through mask-like eyes full of soul.
Darkness and mystery devoid of life replete with plastiky detritus.
My limbs askew foiled with the weight of water pinning me in place.
A narcotic to soothe the way. I will be hidden treasure under the sea.

Or looking up at the wondrous day that is clear and bright, with a golden sun.
Limbs as light as feathers feel of cool ocean breezes and expectations of joy.
My mind melts just enough to give me that unknown but dazzling feeling of peace.
I have time. I can float on my back until it is my time to turn over forever.

We have walked with our eyes closed.
We have wreaked havoc as we go.
We have fought  the bad fight.
We have knelt to superstition.

We have thrilled to the human touch.
We have given our lives for our babies
We have found what we call love.
We have considered our posterity.

We have continually reconstructed our definition.
We have repeatedly lost and found our way.
We have never mastered the skill of co-existence.
We have never discovered the reason for our being.

But for all that we are and will ever be, there is one everlasting constant:
Our cells cry out in a shameless and painful attempt to nullify our mortality .
Arts and letters, music and poetry – all yearnings for the grace of eternity.
Cruel irony that we sentient beings are never to receive the blessed key.