My Turn

At 68 it is now my turn.

You have taken care of me since I was formed in my mother’s womb in darkness.

But the darkness didn’t last, and you became my friend and love.

You loved me though the baby stages, the reckless teen years,

the trials of using you to produce more of me,

the times of struggling with weight, too much or too little.

You only thought of me and I, in my arrogance and misunderstandings of your propose,

treated you as a second-class citizen.

As someone with no rights, and no thoughts for yourself and

For my arrogance, I am sorry.

I am sorry for all the times I didn’t pay attention to what you needed,

what you cried out for,

what you wanted,

what you cried in the night for,

what I didn’t give you.

But now, here we are.

We are still here together but

the tables have turned and it is I who

must take care of you.

I who must finally listen to you,

give you what your need,

respect your sacrifices,

your hurts and sorrows.

You have carried me all these years so now

it is only right that I should carry you.

I watch you struggle daily with things that used to be so easy for you.

So easy that I never gave them a thought.

I do now.

I see how unbalanced you are and wonder when that happened.

I guess I wasn’t paying attention.

Your shape has changed.

That too is my fault.

You have done nothing wrong but are failing anyway.

Time is now your enemy,

The way of nature dictates your future regardless of what I want.

So now it is my turn.

My turn to give you all that you need to keep going

until your time has expired, and I leave you.

When the time comes, I will leave but not without sorrow for you because you, my friend,

have been the best body and friend a human

could ever have had.

I have been blessed to call you mine

and will take the memory of how well you have served me

on my next journey, wherever that may take me.

I will never forget you,

And when the end comes,

I will thank you and send you back to the earth in peace.

Rest well there my friend, rest well.

Next Life

Is is me who I grieve for.

My heart and soul wait

anticipating it all to be as I want, but

I chose you, unwisely.

Why cant you be more, be what I want?

All of you, the collective you too.

But it is only me,

smothering in want and need.

Occasionally the sun breaks through but only to be swallowed by the sea, again.

Will it rise tomorrow?

Maybe not.

It is all slipping away,

It is almost over.

Until next time,

love,

next life.

The One that Became the Last

 

The sky is happy to hold you,

While the earth and I still mourn your leaving.

They say that time heals but all these years have not healed my heart and

The emptiness of your absence remains strong within me and here in this place,

 

Although this field where I stand remains the eternal now

As it was when you and I walked here together.

The scent of its grass brings my heart and memory back to you every time and

Makes me wonder if the flowers blooming here remember our footsteps and loving among them?

I visit here often and breathe in the scent of this place and remember what it held for us, just you and me, and then I hide behind that memory’s peace where my heart is soothed, but only for just a while.

And at sunset, sadness returns again to dampen the grass and hold still my heartbeat in that remembrance.

Yet despite the passage of time and depth of my sorrow, this place appears to be unchanged

From when we walked its paths together, hand in hand as if we had all the time in the world.

But when I look deeper, I know it is unchanged on the surface only and, like me,

Still holds its breath and waits, and sighs and wonders why…

Why does the sky get to hold you so close while it and my heart long for your footsteps,

The sound of your voice, the scent of your skin, and the light of your smile?

The answer never comes and as

The sun sets and the horizon grows dark

And takes you away from me, again,

 I wonder…

Do you remember the first time?

The one that became the last?

Again and Again

My life is contained in a shoe-box beneath my bed,

 

At the bottom of a green glass vase of pennies, or maybe

 

In the prayer flags hung over my mirror holding the cut-out owl Karen made for me.

 

My soul is contained and content in a mildewed pod growing in the land of wind and chi.

 

My future and hopes lie waiting in my pendant box, waiting for my questions with answers I may not want to hear and

 

My love, where is that?  In my heart or his? Love and lust are confused and linger in the scent of him on my heart.

 

My future is no more concrete then a speck of dust illuminated by the sun’s rays peaking through my lace curtains.

 

And death, what of that?

 

When it comes I will seal it and I in an empty bottle and set us adrift on an ocean of eternal possibilities and

 

Where the tide will take us is where we will stay and begin again, and again, and again…

Owls

They are nothing less than silent, swooping, gliding,

Magic,

Whose calls echo through bare spring trees

And color my nights with beauty.

One calls and waits.

The answer to come when it will.

With each call, the distance lessens between their

Voices in the night.

That which fills my night heart with light and joy,

Fills the hearts of others with fear.

It is the fear of ending.

An ending that comes out of the sky

In silent, swooping, gliding, magic.

The magic of beauty or,

The magic and freedom of death.

Into Blackness

I made too much of it,

More than it was.

But not at all what I 

Wanted it to be.

Yet I continued, wanting,

Wishing, and hoping and for what?

For another night?  It was just a one night

At a time love.

It feels unreal now,

 a waste of me, of my soul and heart.

And now begins the slow fade into blackness and silence, just like all the others, as

My soul bleeds and my heart beat stops and

My eyes, still in their blindness, wish it were not so.

The Day I Died

 

It’s hard to remember all the details of the day I died.

It’s mostly just a blur now.

Guess it really doesn’t matter,

But I think it was a Thursday…

A cold and cloudy late fall Thursday afternoon,

Windy and gray.

Cold, strong winds buffeted my little house while 

Trees danced together above the skylight.

The wood stove was blazing across the room.

Its smoke blew by the windows on gusts of northern winds.

Fall’s blazing colors had already faded to the browns and grays of late November and gangs of dry leaves blew across the yard gathering in wood’s hollows and house corners.

No song birds were left behind, the only sound a murder of crows that had gathered on the edge of the clearing, watching, waiting … did they know?

My afternoon tea was steaming on the table beside me as evening shadows grew longer preparing to swallow my cottage in darkness.  Night was coming on earlier and earlier as late autumn made its way closer to winter.

I had gotten up to put another log on the fire and then rearranged myself back in my fireside chair, ready to read, when it began …

At first it was just a familiar sleepy feeling but as the feeling deepened, I realized something was Different; the slowing was within me, deep within, not of this time or place.

The trees continued their dance but now in slow motion silence. 

The crackling of the stove became faint and far away.

What my eyes took in no longer mattered,

And feeling my heart beat stop had no effect on me.

My breath had slowed to a stuttering sign as I felt the me inside

Float to the surface and leave this plain of existence.

I passed into another realm,

The veil between the worlds having been lifted for my entrance.

I cannot accurately explain what I saw and felt as

It is not of this world or this mind set to understand but

They were all there, the “they” I wanted and needed.

My being became wrapped in love and acceptance, a total eternal acceptance.

All pretenses were stripped away and time ceased to exist.

I never wanted to leave and rejoiced in the knowing that I would never have to as

All endings had been left behind.

It’s all still just a blur,

Guess it really doesn’t matter

But I think it was a Thursday…