Beginnings Await
by Odin Roark

This gathering furl of past,
rising from love’s once moist heart,
is now but dry sorrow lingering stubbornly,
where once its canvas of vibrant color
rainbowed the future.

Today only flaking memories small
drift downward,
joining queues of bygone erosion,
where emotions of stalwart bedrock
once held firm.

Like aging scree,
time continues biting thin,
moving yesterday’s drifts into exile,
chased by fossil-feelings once of molten passion,
now but withering dunes,
aimlessly adrift.

This expanse of solitary
whom death made giant of wind
and small as hourglass sand,
whose Sabbath wore Mary Jane shoes
waxed each Saturday,
polished to reflective mirrors
paid homage to steepled Sunday service.

Agonized memories past
seem ever present.
Pain’s last remaining stand
asks why ghost towns await;
why the mind’s dust storms preserve such places
with the drifting grit of expired time.

Like the sand,
fractured and scattered,
aloneness awaits another tomorrow,
clinging to its languishing identity.

For some…

Lonely mutters each night, “I am here,”
its head buried in nocturnal safety,
where unable to forget childhood fears,
reviews its habit of thought,
knowing inflexibility feeds involuntary passage,
extinguishes one’s dreamt upon cheerful utterance of, “I am here.”

Inevitably, all ascends back into time’s ethereal quiet
where new beginnings await.