We started on a common path,
But not one of our choice.
In time we went our separate ways,
To hear or find our voice,
And so traversed the wilderness
With joys and dangers fraught.
The path I chose, not best or worst,
Just mine, or so I thought.
I did not scale that rocky cliff,
Nor cross that deep crevasse;
I found the briars and the thorns,
And verdant, pleasant grass.
Yet here we’re called to take a rest,
Again, not one we chose.
The way is forward; that is clear,
Yet to where no one knows.
Shall we recount where each has been?
Do bygone ways still matter?
Or shall we share a common time,
Again before we scatter?
How will I know about that scar,
Those flowers in your hair?
Or you about my painful limp,
Those wrinkles there and there?
Come, let us simply rest a while,
Tend sore and calloused feet,
For He alone knows when our paths,
Divergent, wandering, meet.
—————
for the 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 12 Poetry Contest
sponsored by Mark Toney
written 03/15/2022
Common Place and Common Time
What we are is concubines
A lesser and part of now
A lesser and part of here
Dictated by the Sun
Dictated it's quite clear
Kept alive by its warmth
Kept alive by its grace
We act as if we do
When we act by laws ordained
You are here right now
Right now you are here
Simply aware of what is
Simply aware of what is clear
Clearly sustained by light
You and I are thoughts
Curiously living in the consciousness of One
April 12 ,2018
Sun, Existence, Here, Now, You, I, Common
They tell me its a new year
That there was some mysterious change or birth
Of common time, that this body fragile
With the wear of turbid life
Slopes closer towards an unknown millennium.
Waht did Nostradamus say
And all the sage and mystics who are peeled
From the fruits like a pear from its skin
Leaving the vulnerable flesh to fetch the bite
Of worms wriggling that crawl within
What did the Holy Christ and his apocalyptic Revelation say
Where is the beast and in what palace
What town, what place, the Herodless generations
Shall tumult to decay? No more
Myths, no Los Ninos nor bending space
Time is the endless going and coming until our death
Earth the same old cycles make.
This mind has carried the Babel of collective thought
Long enough, it must bloom its own flower
To grow its own tree for the sun's simple fire.
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