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)

---

[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

Paris Burning: Part XI

Paris Burning: Flight is Freedom

Part XI

(Paris) The night went past when they should have shut it down and gone to bed; but the hours they kept now were like a family at a hospital death-watch. When it would end, they couldn't discern. Gathering together, sifting through the rubble, they hashed out details already known.

During their zig-zagged walk, holding each other's warm hand, gripping like a lifeline but also staring each other down, they discussed her leaving Paris, returning to America. Wine-stained lips expressed to the other how a split would rip them down the middle, or justifying it in the first place. 

Gabriel said, “We don’t split up as easily as you do…” Charlotte confessed, “my ancestors have been doing it for three generations. My dad, his sister, my sister, the uncles, hell. It’s a family tradition.”

“Maybe we can’t love,” she said. “But that’s so sad,” Gabriel replied.

They were different. Too young to realize that where they were unlike, or dissimilar, was where they fit together like puzzle pieces. Their families had contrasting ways of altering, unfamiliar methods of executing conflict. With immature priorities, too selfish right now to see how their unusual relationship might bind them for another chapter; instead, they came apart. 

“Work. We work. That’s for damn sure. We work!” “I’ll go back, and go to work. Study, make money, practice law, maybe some art. Gabriel, maybe I’ll be happy?” Wistful tears gently rolled out of her blue eyes.

Forlorn, he pleaded: “My heart is yours, Charlotte; it’s softer than yours, I couldn’t make the decision you’re making. It is not part of my soul.”

Most of the serious regret wouldn’t surface for decades; doubt planted like a small tree that would grow into a giant oak. Their special enchantment was more substantial and profound than their notion of love at this point in their lives, they were blind to it. And experimenting with this sort of ardor was reckless, presumptuous, like fooling around with hard drugs.

Charlotte: “I know Gabriel, I feel like I’m forfeiting mi âme doing this.” “Do you realize that? I don’t want to defend myself—I’m trying to define myself…”

Gabriel: “But if you give up your soul how will you make art?” She answered, but it was empty, “I’ll have to figure that one out.” She couldn’t speak to how long that would take.

I’m so fâché Charlotte! 

She replied, “Don’t riot, you’re not a tax protester—you’ve got no yellow vest.”

“Maybe I should leave Paris too.” “But where would I go?” “I’m a Frenchman!” They were exhausted and broken, and it was late; but neither of them were petty or belittling. The rioting comment was flippant, she didn’t expect him to compare her nature to the hurricanes back in Houston.

Smoke wafted through the air, sirens screamed in the night, and the CaféSociety changed forever. A peaceful summer they knew along the Seine dissolved into a cold, crisp, dark, winter of discontent. The city, like their relationship, simmered and popped with tension; she was determined by her will, and he was disillusioned by his love. She seemed practically gone, and he lost focus on art because of the vacuum developing in his heart. Paris crumbled before their eyes, and his dreams were now blurred, abstract, and vacuous. He went looking for a pencil.

There were “spaces” in his life, gaps in the story—white canvas, ready to be painted, or in reality blank for a reason. But why? What happened during those gaps? How many white pages can there be between episodes? He questioned himself, meditating on summer’s calm, anxious about next year. He longed for the stillness, the peace, but he felt the isolation, the loneliness, approaching, crouching at the door. Could he start another chapter without Charlotte? How would he fill the gap? He looked to the white; he could see the patterns of the Gods. Sharpening his pencil and going to work; he looked to the white.

(end)

-30-

Fibonacci Sequence

2018©fiction by Mark H. Pillsbury

[this last video talisman is dedicated to the real Gabriel & Charlotte, from Bruce & Bonnie:

https://youtu.be/ZTIu4UbkK94 all these short chapters are read together to say this...]

(Fair use of copyrighted work shown herein above is not an infringement of copyright law, 17 USC  Sec.107)