Outbreath - julfire

[Larry Robinson]

Outbreath

While everything goes
In its season
With the out breath of life
Is there something that stays?
Such as standing stones that witness the blur of dark and light, 
the streaks of stars over spinning sense
The cosmic seas heaving over the stillness of eternal depths
While my dear friend I saw just the other day,
Laughing, with colors running all about her 
Now has left, tossed well worn flesh aside
While I hold on to mine and feel the ache
My arms insisting on embraces that can no longer be
Reaching for unmade memories
And the elders, that is understood—
they stand like majestic trees, 
disposing wisdom like leaves in approaching winter
We picking up only one of two 
to remark on their beauty 
before tossing them to the wind
the trees will fall. They always do sooner or later
This is not a new truth, 
About ends and beginnings that dance together
To let go, to know movement is the nature of change
Yet still I find myself today, 
in thinking back on faces vanished 
Voices trailing into a mist
Leaves me wondering did they go?
And what is it that stays?
The galaxies burning their path through the heavens
Are they there long enough then, are they what stays?
Who witnesses them?
Poetry tells the truth. 
That it is you and I that become the cosmic sea, 
that which stays
we witness each other in waves of grief and grace 
And the grand wonder of this ever brazen tenderness
You do not leave, I do not stay, 
We are poems of the universe
Pointing the way
to the nameless eternal

     - julfire




"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
    - Wendell Berry
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/poetrylovers/attachments/20221101/d701fd2e/attachment.htm>