I lived my life
So very small
Now left to wonder
Shall I shuffle off
Before I ever roared
As so many others
Come and gone
Faintest whispers
On the wind

I lived my life
So very small
Now left to wonder
Shall I shuffle off
Before I ever roared
As so many others
Come and gone
Faintest whispers
On the wind
Geometries of Euclidean beings
Dominate the irregular perfections
Of organic patterns
And I
A lover of both
Math and nature
Am left unsure
Which is
The greater beauty
Is such judgment
Even necessary
Or wise
After all
Beauty itself
Is the construct
Of an eye
And a mind
Who am I to say
What you should find
Beautiful
Parallels & perpendiculars
Take me away
Lead me astray
Through lines
End games
I do not know
From where I came
Nor necessarily
Where it all goes
Only that all imply
In my faraway mind
Movement & change
Once the light entered the bowl
Something magical happened
Something I’ll probably
Never fully understand
The light coalesced
Hardened
Formed swirling tendrils
Of incandescence
Well
I understood one thing
Light was alive
No
Not alive
Conscious
And what I was witnessing
Was the comingling
Of unmanifested being
One each to a tendril
Swimming as if a school of fish
In a golden bowl
Struck just the right way
By the sun
And then it was gone
Light
Was merely light
Again
But some trick of the cosmic tail
Had let me in on the secret
Because in an instant
I’d known
Light
Is love
And love
Is light
When we are unmanifested
In this purest spirit form
We know this as surely as
The necessity of a breath
We know it in a way
A brain cannot grok
But our manifest purpose
The meaning of our existence
Is to remember
And for a moment
Looking into a sunlit bowl
I remembered
A glimpse of the unknowable
Out of the corner of my eye
A memory I struggle to keep
Every day
Recall the vibrance
Once displayed in many hues
Now no more than trace remains
Though brightness scattered
Here and there
Decay sets in
Drains true nature
Of its lifely due
Thus am I left
With naught but mem’ries
Fading fast
Remiss this guard
Of summer past
Which lingers still
In so few leaves
Fallen to the forest floor
There soon enough
Back to earth
Will they be drawn
And all that was
Will then be gone
Late afternoon sunshine
Filtered through
The winter boughs
Eaves and overhangs
Sheltered her
From the usual Vancouver rain
But today
The sun
Fell on
Her little sunshine chair
A cigarette
And long moments
Filled with thoughts
Without consequence
Smalltalk daydreams
To pass the time
In seeming silence
While she chattered
With herself
About nothing
Beside the red house
Which was all red inside
Though the walls were white
And the Late Colonial furniture
In browns and blues
A quiet little moment
Of no small function
Before returning to
The dysfunction within
A small, life-saving moment
Of manufactured sunshine
Amplified
By the trickle of sun
Passing through naked branches
Such soothes the grief
Of one life’s sad lament
Whose diminished light
No longer casts
Onto the stilling sea
Sufficient light
To bounce a single ray
Confused and lost
Mind gone astray
Now take another breath
Do I
Remember bounteous light
Which shimmered off
A rampant sea
And know that souls
Are infinite
That one life lived
No matter grand or small
Is but a drop
Where raindrops fall
So many more still yet to come
And this one
Though diminished now
Once was bright as raging sun
Gentle current
Beneath the ice
Downstream rumbles
Break the crust
And I am freed