Suddenly

 Then…

 Hands on tricky bars.

Sky in my grip—gone.

Middle Grades…

First time ground slams up.

Friends rush to remain aquintences.

Drafted…

Horizon a blade.

Blood on foreign soil.

Scars as doors that never open.

Middle years…

College presents a growing mountain,

Seeming taller as I climb.

Graduation…

Fear becomes the key is to a locked room.

First job…

Fluorescent bees hum day into night.

 Dating a colleague causing mirrors bend my face

Into something I may not be.

Marriage…

A field to till,

blisters for harvest.

Parents pass…

Orchard frozen overnight.

Family dog joins in the cold beyond.

House a hollow drum.

Career tenure soars…

Money floods in,

feeding and drowning in the same breath.

Future demands…

Without warning, legacy tide rises.

Written Will requiring name pressed into wet cement.

Divorce…

Lightning splits the tree.

Alone.

Breath loud in the empty room.

Clarity…

 All at once,

life is for giving,

not hoarding.

Critical thinking…

Sharp as a plow.

Compassion planted in strangers’ hands.

Sharing fortune to remember what it means to be human.

Suddenly the now…

Illness might arrive like a thief in the night,

stealing my strength in handfuls.

And one morning, awakening brings taste of finality on the tongue,

 the sudden knowing that the road is short now,

that the horizon has stopped moving.

I am likely to sit in the quiet,

watching the light shift across the floor,

thinking perhaps the last “suddenly” is not an ending,

but the moment running from truth finally stops.

and waits patiently.