The Reflection Pool

Our books of self-help
and our generic fictions
don’t tell the epic stories
of our cultures’ heroes. If
those pages are the markers
of our many ways of life and
their growth in all our humanness,
we never moved beyond the obsession
for power, tragedy, and fear.

We’ve existed but did we live?
The records of our joy, compassion,
and miracles are few and far between.
The holiness of life  has fallen into
ruins and rubble while being
replaced with the greed of more,
pile after pile of stuff.

My life is in need of a rewrite.
I don’t need it to be Homeric
in my travels, or Shakespearian
in my loves and familial relations.

I want to give more than I receive.
I want to love more than I hate.
I want to walk, not run;
Climb more trees and rake fewer leaves.

With my head thrown back,
my arms and hands open wide,
I want to greet each sunrise
bursting with the light equal only to
that which shines daily on the
space I call home.

for the elders and the stories they keep

Dust,
in the most primordial meaning of the
word, you and I are found there. Caught in
the swirling wind of dust devils that carry
everything from a McDonald’s burger wrapper
to the siding of our homes. Our dreams, our
passions are but slightly less temporary
than our bodies.

Our refuse, its presence may well surpass
the existence of our planet. Sheets of bubble
wrap and styrofoam coolers will float amongst
dark matter, nebulae, and the space of the
universe around us.

One day, our world will end. Not due to
the pollution and the trash that will
bury the mountains and fill the canyons.
No.
Our world will end because it will no
longer be recognizable to our spirit and
our eyes. Our memories will disappear
and our stories will be held solely by
machines, inducing irrelevancy in our lives.
Our elders will waste away to dust, the
dirt that floats on the air we breathe,
memories, history, and all.