Just Around the Bend…
by Odin Roark

Make-believe knows
Hand in hand
Guardian and child
Never ceases to be
As words meet words
Sentences find paragraphs
Pages turn new discovery
Begetting chapter upon chapter
And then…

Often faith’s endurance knows no end
Like a turkey too numb
To know its head is gone
Or a truck forever stuck in relentless mud

Even the mind’s conscience ratchets its continuous drone
Long past heart’s flickering pictures
Have jumped off sprocket
Coiling images’ remains upon a floor
Always willing to catch the fallen
Knowing restarting is always possible

Yet

In the house
That might have been a home
The phone continues to ring off the hook
Like a metronome gone berserk
Bent on satiating rhythm’s appetite
Past the inevitable wind down

With eyes closed…

Survival holds firm one’s make-believe castle
The house now empty
Save for whispers from the past
Knowing well the drafts of loneliness
Shiver the drifting dust
Becoming the only skin left to touch

Unknowingly
The residual past
Moves through unneeded locks
Once securing doors leading to
Now forgotten passions of privacy
Images rendered blind
By keyhole mockery

Remaining…

The heart’s keyboard
Once delivering its voice of hope and trust
Now accelerating words no longer noticed
Meaning hurtling past yesterday and tomorrow
Like a bullet train screeching off its rails
Ricocheting off walls once holding secure
Now speeding toward a boarded-up station
Once of hourly expectation
A platform crowded with promise
Giving back a passing ghostly blur

So travel hearts in linguistic search
Myth-makers pursuing beautiful language
Knowing delivery never guarantees
Anyone waiting to hear the words
Save perhaps the make-believe child
Walking hand in hand
Believing along with the writer
That just around the bend…