In Knowing

You look out and all you see is blurred. There is distraction, but not a curiosity. You are through.

This poem is an allegory of the river and a life derailed. I have found that nothing gets life in focus more than facing a life thought near an end. Having been swept up in rapids during my years as a whitewater boater, I saw this as appropriate in explanation for the ups and downs of life and the challenges we all face.

--

When you look into the misty tomorrows
And yesterdays
When you dwell on the currents
Churning and turning to and away
Do you linger in the spell of dumbfounded hope
Or do you cast yourself into the rapids
And dash it all against rocks
Drown your desperation
Your fire
Your spirit
Curse at the canyons the river has carved
The horizon lines you see hinted at
Ahead of you
The falling, twisting and turning
That no longer matters
The weak arms and legs
That no longer listen to the pleas
Of a still fighting conscious

It does matter
You know now
It does
And you will do anything to be let go
From this place

A friends hand reaches out
A branch or log awaits you
Or a bend pushes you toward an eddy
You are free
You are no longer desperate
You are seeing
You now know what is important to you

You KNOW and there's nothing else holding you
You have your own rapids to make
Your own twists and bends to form
Your own canyons to carve

A night’s palette

To be among the night, twisted and confined to its fingers of darkly shadows and colorless palette, I am caught up in this web of imaginings. One, while on a roadtrip to the southwest and hiking into Death Valley, was a thought of an artist behind who paints me into a scene (some non corpreal being). The idea was wild and stuck. What came of it was this poem while at a hotel in Idaho.

--

Do I awaken by happenstance
Or by bidding?
Between me and a night’s grand stage
Is no one –
I stand alone

There’s a fettered absence
Of sleepiness
And of time
Only shadowy curtains
Opening into forests and mountains
layered line over line

It is like an artist of dark moods
Painting in shades of grey and black
Who magically alludes
That color is but a few short hours
From bleeding onto a canvas
Too mute for most

It is like me
Perhaps is why I was awakened in the night
To be painted into place
By an artist
I can't see
Who moves the strings of me
Like a painter does a brush