Stealing Time

                                                              

Stealing time,

Skipping stones along the river,

We separate from our own heart.

The best of us extends well beyond this place,

To that unnamed part of all things.

Adrift.

Symmetry and resonance

Shed graceful threads about,

Tying minds up like some ribbon on a gift.

The hard shield of skin softens.

No matter how much we worry about suffering,

The measure we have of consciousness

Will take a breather from the rain.

We can’t bargain.

We can’t even pray.

We stand silently by while what we know drifts away.

Stealing time,

Skipping stones along the river.

Gray Soldier’s Sigh

      

By the clouded spectral  light of  Winter’s moon,

On this burnished ocean without a shore,

I row atop swells of cresting dunes

Apace hushed music of  the muted oars.

Circumscribed with gold by hip and calf,

Hollow reeds about me breath the dim sky.

As I glide across to my other half.

Singing the song of a gray soldier’s sigh.

Adrift devoid the balance to my heart,

Defeated by this promise of my debt;

Where nothing to remember plays a part

In releasing me from things that I regret.

Lie next to me in the coming grass of time,

Should this life’s debt return a blissful find.