Tuesday, May 29, 2012

MAYBE


Maybe if my life crawled
Slow enough to trace the Earth
And come back to the beginning
Still beating, still burning
More than June’s screaming sun

Maybe if my heart was as proverbial
As one mentioned on many a beloved poet’s page
And attentive eyes studied its rhythm
Sometimes slow, sometimes none at all
Forever living far beyond its allotted time

Maybe if my hands
 touched the bark of the oldest tree,
that has offered more breath
than my lungs will ever struggle for
stronger than the storming centuries it stood up against

Maybe if my eyes came alive
Like a city weekend night
And I were somewhere breaking the speed limit
On the fastest way to not here
Enjoying every unfamiliar turn

Maybe if time would stop stealing
my side of the bed
And leave me with a little room and proper rest
If each hour were as soft and kind as my favorite pillow
I wouldn’t mind its company and I’d be better for it

Maybe…
If I were all these things
I wouldn’t be me.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Final Storm


You left your footprints
I found them there after yesterday’s rain
 alone
 in the mud
I was happy to see them
Even though it meant
I’d never again
 get to struggle with the blinding sun
To see the hope in your eyes
As your lashes flutter
Unaware of the envy
In the bird's chirp and morning's mutter

The footprints stay
Long after your final storm
Beside them, I stand long in thought
Close to where you once briefly stood
Perhaps taken by the same current
Of confusion
Struck by the same jolt
Of anger
submerged in a river
polluted with our own qualms
so much that
an invisible today
and the urgency
of every imagined tomorrow
formed a bleak yesterday
that I could not find the strength
to wipe away

I imagined a world
That understood the breadth of you
a Brilliance
stretching the visions
Of those who gazed upon it
With elated eyes
My mind drifted to all the moments
You could have made true
In the places that could have been
If the future safely held you

The sidewalks with your scribbled name
I will walk up to,
stop and smile
because it’s a name I knew
and I’ll wish those that walk by it
would have known it too


You left your footprints
and even though it was too late
I left mine beside yours