All of Life

Fickle findings fold and fade

Amidst the atmosphere 

Capricious candor carries well 

Expounding existential fear

Death dwells not on drib details

Willfully wonderstruck and wild

Intending to ingest infinity  

Til time and truth are not defiled

Harken to hearts harrowed and hard

Aggrieved arteries do acclimate 

Lonely, lost, or languishing 

Lessons learned letting love asphyxiate 

Onus overhangs opportunity 

Fickle findings fade and fold 

Like lessons lost to life never lived

Instead, ignite interminable cold

Flames form futures forgotten now

Eternity expounding til I emerge old

Seasons

To find where time goes -

Have we discovered that yet?

Where the sun meets the sea

And the skies never met

Where the colors all shift 

In the blink of an eye

No in between stages 

No time to ask why

Missed it all in the moment 

Going so fast

Missing it still 

The seasons don't last

Sifting hot sand

Turns to cool rain 

Leaves crunch underfoot 

And snow starts to wane

The sea takes the sun

Where the changing years met 

And time slips away -

To lose but not forget 

Cobwebs

Sunlight never reached this place

Hoarfrost crept further in

Amongst the slipping shadows

Lost and found again

Lost to time and memory

Where all forgotten things must go

Entrapped in dust and cobwebs -

Fate and dreams and snow

In the stories that we tell ourselves 

Now entwined within our veins 

In the background of eternity

Sifting through what remains 

Had the fog been any thicker -

The road that much more unclear

Harsh winds could stop us

Empty words keep us here

Still listening to the stories

Twirling on life's thread 

Of course the sun never reached this place

Rivers freeze inside each head

Yet - let us torch it all with inner fire instead

1096

It’s all just days and days

Losing count while they fly

It’s all an ongoing attempt

To hold the very sky

To grasp these possibilities 

Elusive though they are

To find the unique essence 

Held within each star

We can lay down beneath them

Watch how they shine

We can take our very essence

Learn how they intertwine

How they shift and grow

Together and apart

Complement and contradict - 

Overlapping always at the heart

Time may change all else

As only time may prove

The conviction within the profession: 

Stay with me - all else shall move

If it were but a fleeting fancy

A poetic license gone astray 

Would it have yet prospered to the

1,096th day?

It’s all easy while the stars shine

They say it fades when the sky is matte

But I will love you til it all goes dark -

I will love you even after that

Behold

Ah, but look what we have found now -

Every shade of green within the grass

The trees whisper secrets but won’t say how

Time decides to pass

Through all that burns and fades

In swiftly cascading decades 

Or in slowly eroding ticks 

And tocks that make no sound

Buried in the ground

Or in all we try to fix

Shall we guess what we’ll discover 

In the changing colors of the sky -

The stars winking like a distant lover

The breeze laughing but never saying why

Time began to flow

And life began to grow

Through all that’s false and true

And everything between

What we say but never mean 

In what we feel but never do

But look what we have done now -

Colors bursting brighter than before

Tides crash and hiss, break and vow

Life can mean so much more

Than the counting of days

Discovering all the ways

To shade the grass and sky

And view the rolling sea

Everything we ever wanted to be

Is here in the beholder’s eye