Free Write

Hollowed out in long, patient moments

A potter scooping out the clay

Over time, over years

Digging into the fragile layers of our souls

Content to be, content to change

Content to be amorphous we

Content to submit, to resign from captaincy

Letting the craft drift without direction

Becoming and dissolving into fog on the water

Forgive the sorry wind for stealing our breath

For tearing our eyes, turning our vision to stars

For pushing us forward into the unknown

Refusing to let us stay behind our veil of complacency

Spinning in the void of the depths

Diamond dust in our eyes silver streaks in the dark

Water and sky blurring together

Like shadow into sea, sea into night

All into darkness

Breath trapped behind broken bars

Ribs of shattered dreams

Pressed down beneath the teeth of indecision

Do you remember when dreaming was fun?

When air was free?

When hours cost nothing?

When lazy moments wasted?

Forgotten when today ends and tomorrow begins

When love began and when it was lost

When friends became memory

Suddenly, somehow taking every day at a time

Became years with a forgotten beginning

And only filled with the end

Hello's passed so swiftly into goodbyes

Knowing far too much
And never enough
Left to question what has no answers
Imagine what may be real
Stand on what may be dreams
Like walking on a cloud and not finding the sun
For the tears consuming the air
 

Aging

Note: I don't suppose I can truthfully say that I'm 'old' at 34.  But I have a lot of friends who are taking care of aging parents and my neighbor/land-lady is in her 80's and struggling with dementia.  I spent some time with her the other day, and I really felt for her.  She talks about things from years ago, things that probably only she is left to remember, calls her friends and kids other names from her childhood... she does a lot of crying and she's very frail.  It just got me to thinking about the experience of aging and how the long life we live will one day seem nearly lost, if not gone completely, and there will be few who will understand or share many of those memories with us... It doesn't necessarily make me sad, as bad as I feel for this sweet lady.  It just makes me reflect on how time affects lives and the hearts of the best, and worst, of us.  Maybe its a reminder to truly appreciate each day and each memory, each person that touches our lives and makes them a bit brighter.  I thought of childhood memories as I wrote, and also of my grandmother(s).  Comforting memories of a childhood that seems long ago.  I wonder what I will remember when I reach their age.

So, as such, this poem I started writing is NOT intended to be disrespectful or sad or make any reader sad, it's just... an expression of what I felt coming from this sweet lady who memory is slipping away... Its not particularly long, and I do plan to add to it later.

Flaccid skin and memories

Wilting in the high noon sun

Youth long flown away on departed autumn wings

So impertinent and unkind time has become

Leaving me far behind in winter's unforgiving glare

Gone and lost the vitality I once ignored

Forgotten to all but this tired mind

What began in innocence, the clock has wound back again full circle

Is yesterday today?  Or today lost in yesterday?

The moments blur and fade

Then surface from the deep waters and flare

Sudden bursts of clarity...

Then all recedes again like tides in the mist

How fleeting new flames flicker and waver in life's unrelenting gale

*     *     *

So my mind seeks to think of finer things

Finer times and a kinder world

Like the fresh blush of early morning as the red dawn stains the grass

How the nightingale sings

And the soft flap of barn owl's wings...

Amber fields of fireflies

Laughing and dancing in their flickering light

Sun-ripened grass drifting fragrant vines of scent across the air

Hickory-smoke and cherry-wood from a lazy-embered pipe

Ornamental dishes lined up like ancient knights

Fluttering shadows strobe their faces

Cast through open windows and billowing lace curtains

Old perfume, antiquated but loved

Like rose-petals tucked inside a scroll-top desk

Blue gas flames whooshing to kiss a cast-iron skillet

Still warm from last tea-kettle

Flour and buttermilk being washed from wizened hands

Hands that felt like tissue-paper and sugar

As my own now, blue-veined and white

Eyes that once looked on me with love

Admired my youth and my innocence

They are now reflected in, now become my own

As I gaze upon little faces that smile back at me

As I once smiled up at hers