If there was a lifetime
I could not read it all
Perhaps it’s my eyes
They are older and harder to focus
Perhaps my age - I’ve lived past
Some moments - first love: deeper
Loss - children: almost grown
Divorce and happiness
The discovery there is no good: there is no evil
An awakening that has taken me down
As I continue to grasp the strings which connect
Me to this existence - yes - if I had a lifetime
It would not be enough but I at least can start
The remembrance - the intermingling of branches
The leaves that fall and are picked up and placed
In books such as these
Where voices have an audience hundreds of years
Into a future known only to the writer - the leaf
Will fall out and the words will remain and it will
Be another lifetime- perhaps then I can get it right
We can meet under a new moon
Kiss
Go back into our lives: see my kids grow every day
A better or a worse existence is unknown
What I do know is -
I never would’ve had so many cats
Never known such love
Such sunrises and sunsets
In a Kansas sky
The moment I knew
It might be real - was when you held
My hand - we had a moment of a future
The title didn’t matter
It could be fixed: paneling removed
The carpet pulled - the tile shattered -
The wires pulled -
It could all be done
The moment you held
My hand - then you held another
It was an easy leap: to two then three
To a moment that almost took my life
And yours: exhaustion and fear became
Our companion
“The seven stages of man” - or woman
Or what has become known as a prologue
Where it all became tic for tac: there was no escape
Guilt. Love. Hurt. A decorum of delusion scattered
It was a tense
A movement of extreme skill
I learned so much
How to grout
How to move in the present
It was a gift
A skill
A movement into a new existence
A craft to be mastered - to be left
And what was left beyond a few
Moments and pets and thoughts
A lingering of what may have
Should have: could have: did
It not feel real - a hug a moment
To long to keep