Rising and Falling In a Tempest

The unpredictable yaw of rolling seas, as in life, pummels us from one side to the other randomly dictating capricious ways arbitrarily gripping our lives Life, like the ghost of Christmas past, comes at night, tells its tale and is gone but the dues it extracts keep mounting like wrinkles on our faces the years pile on The uncertainty of pandemics sends people into despair mental frenzy abounds, they wring their hands and worry what happens if I get sick and lose my job? At night I hear the sound of eighteen wheeler trucks rumbling toward companies that make copious profits past the foothills where coyotes cry nature's lament exacerbating my precarious and worrisome future Sometimes, I feel like a piece of watermelon exposed to the desert heat slowly drying up or a taco at Christmas time or a paraplegic in a footrace exposed in those places where I don’t belong Leisure time when needed is so elusive yet now all I’ve got is time and plenty of it, but there’s no leisure in it only worry and does not give me needed rest The yaws of life seldom deviate from its variant course but like ships at sea rising and falling in a tempest they proceed at full speed Our Ship of Life moves predictably toward an unknown horizon unsteadily shaking us from side to side, up and down like loose apples bobbing in an ocean with our paths of uncertainty unfolding as we hold on With our hearts frozen in a delirium of past disappointments they vanish the happy times into the ether of regrets still we cling to those cherished memories when Life was more accepting of our youthful indiscretions maybe, but Life being what it is, we cling to the good feelings experienced that we come to accept as the ebb and flow of life evolves and pushes us toward a far horizon one we shall never know.