Silken, shimmering gossamer soft
Radial threads pulled taut
Anchor lines holding the structure in place
A frame laid out, outlining a shape
And a sticky spiral dew-soaked and tempting
As I get closer what is that, that I see
Thrashing, struggling, trying to get free
Yet chained in bondage with sticky manacles
Its dark body stark against soft white threads
Like rats in a maze running out of time
And this may sound like a bug in a web
But happenstance is rarely unorchestrated
Now if we zoom out maybe just a little
And look inward to our lives, what do we see?
Are we … trapped … in bondage by a web?
Squirrels in the branches rustling the leaves,
Scurrying up the trunks of the horse-chestnut trees,
Lightly dancing through autumn’s browning shroud,
From branch to branch, thin branches bowed.
Hunting through the leaf litter, gathering the nuts,
Through the furrows, ditches and cuts,
Head on a swivel, survival’s a must,
Autumn’s bountiful harvest banked in trust.
The cycle of life roaring against the age,
Before winter arrives with its icy cold cage,
Transforming the landscape, hiding the bank,
Its fingers grasping, tugging the veil.
Where once existed deep reds, yellows and browns,
White has taken over and frosted the ground.
Many will live but others will perish,
Before springtide appears and winter is vanquished.
New life arrives in bitter green shoots,
And once again scuttling come reds and greys,
The gnawing, the nibbling, the reconnaissance of trees,
The cycle repeats as seasons march on.
Life isn't a scattered piece.
It unfolds into trillions of unknown roads:
Some lead to light,
Some to dark,
Some to danger,
Some to heal.
They stretch endlessly.
The soul that once arrived,
Splinters into fragments.
The glass can be shattered or melted,
Cracked or polished,
Fused or cut,
Recycled or etched.
Yet it remains glass.
Some earn a name.
Some don't.
Yet all meet at the same place,
Where every arrival has always awaited its return.
Demise and emergence:
The funnel and source;
The one no one can ignore,
Still lingering to reclaim
The soul it once awakened.
All you earn,
Remains only as fragments of yesterday.
Roads remember your footsteps,
Until they fade into echoes no one hears.
Names become whispers no one remembers.
Yet the soul keeps chasing the unseen tomorrow,
The endless race,
Forgetting the waiting funnel of life,
That waits to end the journey,
That once began among millions
Of unknown roads.
Ivory light fades
at solstice.
A coin in my hand
reminds me
that life is spent.
Still, I hold hope.
When darkness comes,
I rise.
Personal Challenge:
Theme: Mortality
Emotion: Hope
Color: Ivory
Season: Solstice
Form: Free Verse
Object: Currency
Verb: Rise
Pastel pages turn and turn,
colour mix turning to burn.
Foster baby cries its first,
bursts of today taking its turn.
Every shade will have its season,
every fire will find its reason.
Blister pack locked it in,
soaking up packets of sin.
Last moments in the soup,
regaining a sense to recoup.
Hold the light against the glass,
let the colours drift and pass.
Nothing owed and nothing lost,
only the turning, only the cost.
Past the future round and round,
pure chaos in master the sound.
Beauty in the knowing.
Everything showing.
Poetry Wheel Challenge:
Theme: Mortality
Emotion: Hope
Color: Crimson
Season: Autumn
Form: Couplet
Object: Wallpaper
Verb: Wander
Created using the PoetrySoup Poetry Wheel.
I wandered through maple trees this morn
Whose crimson leaves were withered and torn.
Each Autumn, chilled winds steal their leaves
Thoughts of mortality gives me reason to grieve
Stuck to the ground, like wallpaper on walls
Each leaf lies dying when Mother Nature calls.
With no chance of life, to hope they can’t cling
Only in Spring and Summer can they have a fling
crimping clouds ripple in reflection the day contracts as memories reseed in refection
If I'm to be
In a world where
We are possessed
By the dreams
And nightmares, where
None may say,
Then I choose
To be with you
And only you.
And when all this world
Has turned to grey,
The stars have stopped,
No light remains,
Black is gone,
No night surrounds,
Nothings left
Nor does remain,
I will know
I had spent
All my mortal days
Loving you, and only you.
And when all this clay
Has turned to ash
The dust is gone
No star remains
I will know,
I love you still.
And when we are
Past the time
When all the dreams
Have gone away
The Nightmares died
And are no more
I will know,
I love you still,
As I did
All my days.
And
When not an Angels left to cry,
For our kind
Not a demon does remain, to punish us
For our crimes
Not a soul, is
Anywhere
I will know,
I love you still,
As I always have,
And always will.
I mourn your death, though you still breathe and speak,
No carved stone waits where your memory should lie;
I hear a silence where your laughter used to peak,
And rehearse your absence like a practiced goodbye.
There is no grave to mark the shape of your end,
No earth has closed where your shadow might remain,
Yet I still kneel where I imagine you’ll descend,
Tracing future hollowed out by unnamed pain.
I build you a coffin out of all I cannot say,
And line it with the seconds you have not yet lost,
Each one a small betrayal of a coming day,
Each one a quiet accounting of an unseen cost.
Your voice still stands, but I already hear it fade,
Like a room remembering the furniture gone cold,
Like iron slowly learning to degrade,
While no hand has yet dared to make the story old.
So I learn your leave before it learns your name,
And I grieve a shape that time has not agreed to form;
A future stitched from silence, woe, and borrowed flame,
Where I know no stone—only pain keeping me warm.
They cradle absence in inherited creed,
A sculpted sky of words they never test,
Where certainty outgrows the need to read
The fine-print silence lurking in each rest.
They build a Heaven stitched from stolen light,
A fragile citadel of borrowed breath,
Where doubt is taught to bow and step from sight,
And fear is softened into faith till death.
For Heaven lives in language, not in ground,
A story tuned to quiet human dread,
A place that only ever can be found
Within the living, not among the dead.
And when the final pulse gives out its claim,
No gates unbar, no choir bends the air;
Just vast unlit indifference, no name,
Where belief fades into a wordless stare.
The street exhales in measured, patient light,
Where footsteps keep a cadence soft and slow,
An I, a witness to the day, walk on—
While somewhere in my mind, a name begins to grow.
A stone appears where none was set before,
Its surface pale with weather, time, and loss;
No hands in sight, yet carved with patient care—
A name, a date, and silence etched across.
It feels so close, yet too far to reach,
As if the thought itself has learned to wait;
A whispered echo at the edge of speech,
Where life and stillness almost hesitate.
A though intrudes, unbidden, keen, and still,
It settles where the quiet held its form;
Not summoned by intent, yet marks the will,
A distant tremor in an unseen storm.
I measure life against what time unthreads,
Each breath a brief inscription on the air;
The body writes what memory still treads,
And fades into the grammar of the bare.
And still I walk, the cadence kept and known,
The sky unchanged, though meanings rearrange;
What lingers is not lost, but overgrown,
A quiet thought, persistent, yet estranged.
There’s somethin bout death
that don’t sit right with my soul.
It’s a bit much
to think that one day
the draft won’t flow,
the birds won’t sing,
and the feel of her smooth skin
against the callouses on my fingers
won’t feel like magic.
There’s somethin bout death —
the way it creeps into memory
the same way high school sweethearts do,
sudden and smooth,
leavin in the wreckage
that old craving
to taste life again.
Ya see, I’ve spent my life
fillin the hourglass
with love notes and apologies,
makin sandcastles,
leavin footprints
on the shores of hearts
I couldn’t reach.
There’s somethin bout death
that feels like a song —
and I’ll sing out of tune
till it all makes sense.
The turtle sighed,
"You're going to take too long, aren't you?"
He slandered—yet, not exactly a lie—
The sloths eyes slowly began peer into the distance
As it gathered thought to forge reply
The turtle died
The sloth eyes slowly grew wide—
Not again;
Another friend,
Inhaling deep to sigh
In her cold, snowy breasts
They lay me down to rest
The pattering of earth
The gravel and the dirt
It doesn't hurt
I don't even feel it;
I hear it as it hits
The top of the casket
I hear my darlings crying
And throwing tearful fits
By far, the worst part of dying:
The grieving I feel
From family and friends
If only they knew,
Though death is real,
Life never ends
And we’re always with you
Even if you’re too sad to see
The wilted rose beside you
Is me
The clouds and falling snow
Is a me, you’ll come to know
When you look out the window
And trace the blowing leaves
And imagine their dry crinkling
And somber familiarity we’d share
Both loving the crisp winter air
How everything seems golden
Yet bare
Your heart sees me
Sees me standing there
Next to the old tree
As a cat’s glare gathers in the gloom
Recollecting me
On an old tree, cranky and high, Hung this pathetic and chaotic life, As charming as a golden ripe fruit, Yet as hard as the rocks beside the mountains.
Often, as the tide draws high, Footprints of desperate, grasping men Scoured its root, Seeking the magnitude Of the endless gains of life.
Life is frail, yet so beautiful. Days are like the sun, But they grow dim when nature calls. Death ushers into a realm of solace, Yet life struggles, Fighting to stay in a futile battle. Nothing is too much a gain or loss, Not even the earnest fight Against the unprecedented escape from death.
Do not take too much or give less, For life bears its own scale of weight, Balancing your ways With dictates that may be insufferable.
Still, this pathetic and chaotic life Doth have something to offer "The best heaven we see now" Though hanging on an old tree, Cranky and high.
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