The road takes me through
A deepening darkness
Toward a near horizon
Of fantastical colour
Receding with the sun
I depress the accelerator
Hoping at least to keep pace
But wishing to my core
That someday
I will catch up
The road takes me through
A deepening darkness
Toward a near horizon
Of fantastical colour
Receding with the sun
I depress the accelerator
Hoping at least to keep pace
But wishing to my core
That someday
I will catch up
Water of life
Cuts into stone
Reveals depths
To be plumbed
A hard journey down
A harder journey back
Rewards every step
Even the most painful
Idyllic setting
Empty seats
New normals
Under development
I have convinced myself
That chaos follows me
As if a companion
Or a stalker I can not shake
Until today’s revelation
That it is merely disorder
Of my own orderly creation
Like the roiling waters
Left in the wake
Of a vessel underway
And I am always underway
Though always looking back
Focused on the havoc
Left behind
In the lives of self and others
Manufacturing in my mind
The spiritual narrative
Of a Job-like tragedy
That relieves me of responsibility
I lose myself in the sea
In the sounds of the waves
Breaking against the rocks
And the subtler susurrus
Of foamy water
Climbing then falling
The shallow sandy shoreline
The tiny boats
I make from the thoughts
I no longer want to have
Recede with the dying waves
To be consumed by the surf
I prepare more
With all the parts of me
I never asked for
Or cannot be rid of
And watch as they glide gently
Into roiling oblivion
I am free
For the duration
Of an ebb tide
Soon enough
The flood comes
The inexorable sea
Returns them all to me
Dawn already
Come and gone
First sun reflects
From wintry throne
Beneath the glow
Of cloudless sky
I hold my grief
In chill repose
The magic light
Has challenged woes
Soon comes the smile
Upon the sigh
Bruised
Scarred
Burnt
But OK
I spit sand and salt
From my parched mouth
Then
Hunger
So up now
Onto the roiling sea of dunes
With their smaller wavelets
Of grasses in the wind
From the tallest
Scan up and down the shore
Only waves of ocean and grass
And the tidal strip of sand between
Inland
A barren of pines
Obscures whatever topography
Or structures
May be beyond
At the forward fringe
Where dunes meet forest
Thin
Scraggy
Scattered
Windswept trees become soon enough
A thickly boughed and wooded
Ideas without a tide
Or a beach to wash up on
Soaring on an unseen wind
I am adrift in a familiar peace
The pleasures of moments lived fully
On sun and sand excursions
Whether accompanied or
As preference sometimes won out
An adventure of solitude
Before long
The harsh admonishments
Of sun and wind take their toll
And while chewing my lip
In meandering thought
A chapped bit of it tears away
Leaving the taste of iron
The sting of revealed dermis
The elements have reduced my options
To an accommodation with mortality
Move or die
Shade or die
life finds a way
in the most inhospitable
conditions
places
times
to
survive
thrive
flourish
so too
can I
In the darkness
An inner light
Dim but ageless
Beyond is daylight
Through a window
Barred
Trapped
Inside
I quell the panic
Mindful
Of the small dim light
Until it grows
Illuminates the darkness
And the latch
To the bars containing me
I am free
Remembering the power
Of even a small dim light
For me
For you
For anyone
For anything
Then you hold me
Look into my eyes
Show me what love is
You wear your heart
With just a look
So that anyone can see
Even me
In the cold dark blue
Warming to the warmth of you