Tag: life

When Death Came

One sunny Sunday
Death came to my smithy
In his shroud of black
Trailing a shadow, like blood
Spilt on the butcher’s floor

Your time has come.

Said Death

What say you?

I am not ready, Ancient One.

So say they all.

No matter the depth
Of the blue I fall into
There is light above
And a vibrancy of life
I can climb to

I turn the brightness up
Raise myself out of the depths
The mire
The hardship
Out of the confusion
And disorientation
If only for a moment

Breathe

Like coming up for air
In the tumult
Of crashing surf
Before the wave
Takes me under

In this arc that is life
We are born
We breathe
We eat
We cry
We love
We hurt
We’re hurt

We learn to speak
In ways elegant
And ignorant

We grow old
Or we don’t
But all of us
We die

In another time
When the ships sailed in
And the ore shipped out

In another time
When the pier was planked
And we sailors came

In another time
Oh so long ago
In a world now lost

They come
The families
In their donkey carts
Loaded with goods to sell
At the weekend market

An anachronism
A paradox
To a Westerner
Like me

I learn to let life flow where it must
Knowing, like water, it can only go
Where the landscape allows it

Water will not run uphill
It will not run fast across a plain
It will not run at all
Where no rain falls

Wash over me
Cleansing waves
Free me
From this detritus
Of life’s
Discontent

I love the odd
The unusual
The idiosyncratic

I love being
In the places
I might only imagine
From a sci-fi author’s words

I love to photograph them
Then tweak the image
To enhance
Their oddity

There are places in this world
Which take me back in time
Or is it forward?
I don’t know

Is this the dawn of time?
Or apocalypse?
The beginning of life?
Or the end of it?