PIECES OF THE JOURNEY – A COLLECTION

TREE

Leaves lost, torn by wind and hail.
What trail is left, where to the Holy Grail?
Abscission layers forming early, leaving scars to hold and last the season.
Is there a plan in the pain of change, does it harbor any reason?
Warm days sapped the moisture from the leaves.
The hue of the bark gives a hint to why it grieves.
Just to seed one other self was the only desired gift.
“To be or not to be,”
is the chasm of being that forms the eternal rift.
The purpose is salvation, the perpetuation of the kind.
Does one dying example deny the grandeur of the mind?
Life and the changes of the years, too fast, not enough time
to build the strength to win
when one is past his prime.
The tree is dead, the chapter done, and now I know,
soon I too will lie
beneath the blanket of the snow. P.S.
As I sweat in my chosen arenas,
I hear a shout,
“Maybe that is all you’re here for – to seed a son and die!”

DUTY

And then I saw it –
a final notice on the last page of the inside section, “Flags at Half-Mast for Commandos.” Such a sense of national pride!

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE

As I ran along a public road and through a public park, I marveled at a public lake and heard a public concert.
I continued on through a public school yard and across a public golf course. I topped a rise and gazed across a panorama of public streets and public housing projects to the view beyond:
A public forest and a setting of the sun.
I asked myself
if there was something more that one needed and suddenly a spark spit forth and seeded
a train of thought that ultimately did concede:
If there hadn’t been a private purpose,
I would have difficulty enjoying my public now.