Category: Detail

Off the rails

Sometimes
Life goes
Off the rails

I can let
The consequences
Lay where they come to rest

I reach too far
And get blown back

But that’s OK

Too far
Is simply a place
I haven’t learned to reach

Just yet

To my eye
The wall is solid
To my hand
The rock, impenetrable

To a neutrino
The space between the atoms
Seems like the emptiness
Between the stars

From deep in the Earth
Driven by heat
Water bubbles up
Carrying the stuff of Earth

Depositing, Depositing, Depositing
On mounds and terraces
The beautiful stuff of Earth
Cools, solidifies, colours

Time seems so merciless
And malicious

Until I look again
And see the beauty
In the dilapidated
The strength
In the distressed
The resilience
In the rusted

In the time it takes
For the flood to wane
And the wave to recede
Back to its ocean source

I will wash away
The tears of my last failure
And gather myself up
To have another go

Hot sun and hot water
Cascading down
One revealing
One creating
Terraces of minerals

One from Earth
One from Sky

Rust reminds me
That decay, too
Is beautiful

In the stark trial of time
Which is stronger?
That which renews, or
That which endures?

Time goes every year
And never comes back
Yet always comes around
To the same time

And here am I
Year over year
Setting down my characters
Setting down my letters