And giving them right back.
Every deep breath
Gets paid off
With a sifting
Handful of sighs.
Everything I drink
Drips to the floor
In either a puddle
Of brackish sweat
Or a thimbleful
Of fugitive tears.
Always inviting the entire world in
Just as your old self checks out.
All this bundled hope
Dissolving in puddles of doubt.
We take from our parents
And give to our kids
Who take from their kids
To fill the gaps
That opened up
Deep inside me.
(It was all those times I gave
But could never quite accept.)
Now I’m out of juice.
I’ve already tapped the last
Of my rapidly dwindling reserves.
We’re always on the verge
Of perpetual arrears.
The dirt under my nails
That swirls down some drain.
An hour of mindless fun
Preceding a sleepless night
Of anxious despair.
Love is the thing that doesn’t change.
You can take it and you can take
It and it’s just a million
Little explosions in the sun
And it’s just the night
Or it’s just the day, to us;
A warm summer day
Or a frigid winter’s night
Depending on our
Distance from the light,
A perfect circle on fire.
When it's extinguished
It won't matter anyway.
You can offer yourself up
And you can give and
You can give like
Lazy tropical rain
Spattering against
The vastness of ocean,
The cloud that empties itself
Of form and substance
To no particular avail.
I am the cloud that thinks
It is a cloud that can be emptied,
That doesn’t know it was always the ocean.
There is no volume
And there was never
A measure of weight.
This stone path is enough.
One full stride
And then you add them all up.
(Here I go again)
I never knew how many stones,
How many steps it would take.
Far too many to count.
(Here I am again)
I keep showing up early,
Willing to learn,
But the deepest understandings
Always arrive so late.
7/14/21
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