My song, a melody composed,
on heartstrings of each passing day.
This ballad’s mine, and mine alone,
a verse of life, to sing my way.

T’was never plain and seldom free,
as tempos often changed and rush,
but always, I’ve been greatly blessed
with life’s vast treasures mostly hushed.

The strains that I have sung through life,
at last have finally found their ground:
A tenor voice, in senior years,
the songs I sing, with value found.

I lift my voice, the world to hear,
for ne’er will it be heard again,
as long as there is life on earth,
and time has reached its final end.

You play your song
and I am back once more,
to a day of crushing good-byes.
Sneaking in the back door
of my protected memories
you find me.

I try to hide away
from everyone,
and everything;
trying to hold back irrepressible tears
that stream down
my cheeks.

Collapsing in a pile on the beach,
at the end of a long trail
at the ocean's edge,
my emotions spill out
in pools like blood,
flooding over me.

A rock wall at my shoulder
and shells at my feet,
my tears fall heavy
as I sob through my thoughts.
Writing fails me and my words fall flat;
I am lost between two worlds.

Even after thirty years,
my breath still catches in my throat
to hear your haunting melody.
My eyes still hold tears,
from the heartbreak
of goodbye.

My bedsheets envelop me
with the familiar scent of home
as I lie comforted
in their warm embrace.

Outside my window,
crows call from maple trees
their leaves tipped in gold and ochre,
while raven visitors welcome me.

Sprinkled with bits of bleached sand,
my dashboard is a daily reminder
of my my beach-time walkabouts
where I kept my hopes and dreams.

My tropical adventure,
now just a memory in snapshots
lies packed away with shells and other mementos,
as I embrace tomorrow.

Summer's sultry days
with their myriad of challenges,
have molded me into the woman I am,
and who I will become.

Dark death skirts beaches in blood red,
as coffee colored swells wash in more
carnage to the shores;
we are blindly poisoning our waters.

Toxic plumes of red tide cover the seas,
beaching whales and seals,
manatees, and fishes;
we indiscriminately **** our sea life.

The brisk breeze off the Gulf
brings the smell of rotting death
that is all around;
we are blindly killing ourselves.

Our lifeblood,
the seas and its inhabitants,
slowly slip away;
we disrespect nature.

Mother earth mourns
as we continue
to ****** its inhabitants;
we are dying.

Then the rains came;
they fell in torrents,
flooding over me with pain,
driving me to the ground.

Searing pain, unrelenting,
Its waves of nausea
washing over me,
cutting into my days.

Misery is my tutor,
teaching lessons of life.
I struggle with their mysteries,
so many elude me.

Still the rains fall,
pelting me with stinging tears,
and each day I raise my shield
to challenge the oncoming gale.

Burning, midday asphalt
reaches up to break my fall,
as I crumple in a heap
of broken pain.

Wiping blood and sweat
from my face,
a voice cuts through the
sound of my beating heart.

Gentle hands reach out,
calm and soothing,
lead me to icy coolness
and safety.

Divine messengers,  
press me to ride
their magic medical van
to ER.

Within a world of azure blue,
the mantas glide with angel wings,
and fly on winds of ocean waves,
inside their realm of mystery.

Like ancient beings from the deep,
they flash and shimmer in our light,
with other-worldly mammoth forms;
cephalic fins and flattened frames.

These gentle giants of the night,
draw fishes from the briny deep,
their vivid forms flash to and fro,
feed on the banquet of the sea.

They dance balletic in our lights;
exquisite, rings and summersaults,
with bubbles lit to guide their path,
they glide just past our mortal reach.

These stunning marvels of the deep,
are but a finite sampling,
of what our planet offers up,
far past our wild imaginings.