Poetry

What I am thinking when I am looking far away

Contemplating the precipice of the abyss,
Gazing down into the ebony reflection of the stars –
Shadows of a broken Gendarme upon the Seine –
All are memories that keep me to this razor’s edge.

I relive things that will never live again,
I see her smile in the shape of the wide blue sky,
And see her eyes in smoldering embers of a funeral pyre.
The summer wraps its arms around me as she once did.

I am a poor player, his hour no more, curled upon the floor,
Written in tear smudged ink on bits of crumpled paper,
Thrown half away nearby a crowded wastebasket,
A playwright’s revision, revised and forgotten.

In the quiet spaces, I seek some solace from this storm
Instead find only echoes of my mother cursing
My father’s decision to live out as best, the remainder of his days
And not challenge the always coming on of night.

What is love that makes us think to quit this mortal coil?
This want to wake now seeks to sleep beneath the soil.
Why, when we think upon the most adoréd days of yore,
Do we then reject the ‘morrow and cease to dream of more?

Then I think perhaps my father did not wish to leave
That if the cancer had allowed, he might have asked reprieve
But as he had embraced what life had given to his plate
This too he would accept and never curse his fate.

And this now is what becomes apparent to me,
That though love be reason, faith, solace and more;
Be ever so cherished and worth the fighting for,
Its truth is lost if I am not true to me.

Come to that, I take a step back from this crisis,
Shake my head and laugh at this bittersweet cartoon.
That for all the soundless furies that drive us,
It serves us not to stay too long nor leave too soon.