Flea Market

 

I love the useless boxes,

Too small for anything much,

Ornately carved

By an idle hand

With an artisan’s kindly touch;

 

I love the faded papers,

Replete with faded news,

That tell the tale 

Of ambitious men

And their antiquated views;

 

I love to stalk the aisles 

And handle the debris,

Part treasure

And part flotsam,

That makes our legacy.

Falls

 

The leaves are already letting go,

Letting the dream of summer fade

Into the gauzy gaze of memory,

Where everything is golden light.

The swamps are red again,

Early as ever,

Canaries in the autumn coal mine,

Dying for their promptitude.

And morning is crisp

As a fallen apple,

Crisp as a song in the shallow air,

Promising months of mellow glory

Before the pall

Of winter

Falls.

Finality

 

There will be no tribunal

There, at the end of everything,

To tally up the value

Of everything you ever did.

 

No scale will tremble

Under the weight of your sins,

Or wobble with admiration

Of your love and sacrifice;

 

Only a final ripple

Coming out of your final breath

Will testify, for one moment,

That you ever were here at all.

 

Everything that matters

Matters now, and only now.

The future is too late;

The past is ashes;

 

And the infinite weight of the present

Is light enough to carry cheerfully.

Age and Wisdom

 

Thinking the thoughts

Is only the first step.

You have to find a way

To make them a part of you.

 

They have to soak down

Deep below the skin

Into the secret place

Where the old self hides:

 

The primal self,

The heir of millennia,

The bashful soul

Unblinking in the dark.

 

Knowledge is nothing

Until it’s instinct,

Sewn into the bones,

Felt in the dangerous heart.

Age

 

He wore the years lightly,

Secure in the knowledge

That his soul was not changing

Or shriveling up.

Only the body

Showed marks of wear,

And even these

Were not all for the worse;

He had more texture,

He told himself,

Like a pencil sketch

Lovingly filled in.

 

Besides, what’s a body?

A physical thing.

A chemical miracle

That somehow can think.

His thoughts were not aging;

They were bright as ever,

And much too absorbing

To let him worry much.

Small Blessing

 

God bless my little life,

As petty as a dream,

As vanishing as sorrow,

Both silly and supreme;

 

God bless my meager worries,

My underwhelming pain,

Small joys and smaller comforts,

The muttering of rain,

 

The having and the yearning,

The butter and the knife,

And all the towering moments

That make a tiny life.