Poetry on Time

Poetry on Time

Hibernating over the long winter,

If only it was at rest.

Piecing together what begins to splinter,

Remembering the best.

Deep in the cave

Lost in the dark.

Trying to save

What has broken apart.

Awash like flotsam, those you cannot retrieve,

Jetsam memories, born from distress, tossed.

The truth is between what I know and believe,

Some, though valuable, still they are lost.

Mourning the past,

Lives we were unable to live.

Tide comes in fast,

Giving all the effort I can give:

Surfing a tube, riding a wave

Rapidly escaping disaster.

Moving, crouching, hoping to stay,

On the surfboard going faster and faster.

Crashing on the rocks

Hurtling to the bottom.

Reality is what shocks

And this poetry is solemn*

Where does man find solace?

A story w/ chapters we don’t want to read.

With age it happens to all of us,

There are dreams lost, we have to concede.

Trouble comes not from what we don’t know,

But instead, about which we're sure.

When we find out that it "just ain’t so,"[i]

We go looking for a cure.

How to move from resentment to gratitude?[ii]

Fighting, entangled in the rope of an anchor.

A daily journey, a choice of our attitude,

Let go of the weight, unless it will sink her.

Complaining too long,

He built up a wall.

Instead sing a song,

Give thanks for it all!

God orchestrates, guides your life.

Journey's steps, movements of grace,

Assured as we are, there will be strife,

It proceeds quickly, memories fade.

Time is currency as valuable as money,

When we’re young, we’re inestimably rich.

Water is calm, morning is sunny,

Hook something, even if fishing in a borrow-ditch.

The present is not a potential past,

It's the moment of choice and action.[iii]

What if imaginations are recast?

Living each day with passion.

Can’t sit still,

For whenever we stop.

Think what you will,

But in order to reach the top.

Climbing the tall hill,

Jumping over hands of a clock.

Each second passes like a beating heart

The pace of time ticking with the clock.

From the moment life is fated to start,

Racing forward, until it stops.

Warping, winding, twisting, grinding,

The fabric of time swirls into a black hole.

Grasping, stretching, flowing down into my mind.

Déjà vu year-after-year, only repeating what you know?

Expanding outward, like rings on a tree

Forest, tree, leaf; years, weeks, hours.

Covered in bark, growth isn’t seen,

Progress you can’t see, I don’t know yours.

Memories past, do not last

Future uncertain as the next warm sunrise.

What if you had only one day to pass?

Lived w/ purpose, experienced w/ surprise.

Priorities match the time allotted,

But that begins if you assume:

Tomorrow could be funeral-plotted,

Cold, dry, deep, where one cannot exhume.

Let us eat drink and be merry

For tomorrow we die?[iv]

Is there gain if you hurry,

Look to color, life, and beauty, w/ your eye.

Take time to listen more than speak

Any banquet, in memory, won’t compare.

A heavenly city with golden streets,[v]

Home when you get up there.

Limited by time and space

God seems abstract.

To know him, seeing his face,

Is a relationship realistic, a fact?

Living life backward,

Momentum would build.

Becoming childlike, living son-ward,

Death/birth ending, small, and stilled.

Wise to unwise,

Robust to small.

Memories counter-clockwise,

To the simplest of all.

Original love in mother’s eyes,

Life's gift begins in adoration.

Bonding one can only categorize,

As the link to another generation.

You are this moment now,

At once, there is no other.[vi]

No past, no future; no why, no how,

Having met the “unmoved-mover”[vii]

If you gave up the time to read these verses,

May I leave you with a warning:

They don’t put hitches on hearses,

You aren’t guaranteed tomorrow morning.

Don't piece together what is shattered and broken,

Sweep it up, throw it out, it’s best to let it go.

Memories are real, they can't go unspoken,

This is something everyone knows...

But knowing how time works,

Being comfortable with its flow?

Thoughts, memories, even these words,

Melt away like snow.

Days grow like grass,

Flourishing like flowers in the field.[viii]

The wind comes, blowing hard; alas,

Beauty and youth once known, must yield.

*Dedicated to Brent:

Graduated, pledged, 

grew up together,

Away we both went.

He just passed away,

So much to say today.

(But too much unsaid)

I didn’t know he would be dead.

Despite being gone,

He lived a meaningful life.

#RIP DBP[ix] 

With a tear in my eye.

Knowing my sorrow, counting my tears,

God, you kept them in a bottle.[x]

Taking refuge in you thru the years,

My home is found in your gospel.

(end)

Poetry©Mark H. Pillsbury (2019)

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[i] Mark Twain

[ii] Henri Nouwen

[iii] Simone de Beauvoir

[iv] Apostle Paul

[v] Revelation 21:21

[vi] Ennis

[vii] Aristotle

[viii] Psalms

[ix] D. Brent Pogue

[x] Psalm 56:8