Sunday Morning #2

This Sunday morning’s made so fine
it makes me resent both
my mortality
and the deliberate speed of light.

Before I die, I want to see them all
the billions of created things
numberless planets and their people
I’ll never see.

They’re all out there, you know
waiting for our appreciation.

Let’s do it now, this afternoon
we’ll be back in time for a glass of wine
then some dinner and quiet conversation
about the journey.

The hard thing about living
is not that we die, but that
we die with so much of life
unlived.

 

This Caterpillar Life

One foot in each world?
I have them in a hundred worlds
a centipede whose feet have stepped
in all the paint pots
splashing a happy rainbow scrawl
across the graph paper of my years

Between the Bars

He can’t sign his name anymore
hands shake an up-tempo rhythm
like some damned digital drum kit
that you can’t find the switch to turn it off
so Peggy does it for him.

Still, he can pick up his fiddle
squeeze the neck and draw the bow
the tremors stop
and a high thin wire of golden sound
uncoils in the room,
grateful notes spilling like drops of sunset
as they slip to freedom
between the back-beat bars
of his affliction.

Eyes closed, smiling that bad boy grin
his renegade pulse is still
and time stops
for a few short numbers
Then he opens his eyes
hands the fiddle to Peggy
and steps off the stage.

The silent beat returns
as she closes the fiddle case.