Preparation Unending
by Odin Roark

Oh, how we dream forever eighteen.

Like a ghostly James Dean,
Porsche steering wheel in hand,
Pacific Ocean to the west,
Radio blaring Bernstein's "Age Of Anxiety,"
Life dares mortality to turn its hourglass.

Years pass and life’s romance becomes a faded fantasy,
Archived beside a warrior’s Borneo wildness,
Where drinking jungle blood
And watching stars unseen before
Dazzle a different appetite’s imagination.

Alas...

Duration pulls up at reality’s weigh station,
Where history’s illusory aspiration
The rising,
Reigning,
And controlling enemy within,
Arrives kicking and screaming at the quietus,
Where the inevitable passing of the moment,
Bodes existence assumed dead.

Yet…

Like the rain,
Resolution knows earth’s momentary grounding
Is merely evaporative transience
Becoming a skyward reach
For evolution’s next momentary stop,
The next embrace of cosmic preparation,
That perpetual continuance that is
Was and will continue to be
All of time’s particulates
Forming into tomorrow’s dreams.