Running On Empty

The world survives on filled reservoirs—
the school bus humming before dawn like a yellow bumblebee fat with purpose,
the surgeon’s steady hands lit by a battery of concentration,
the river-fed mill wheel turning its wooden prayers,
the young parent carrying sleepless hours

as if balancing a lantern through fog.

Everything depends upon some hidden tank.

When emptied, a heart becomes a dry well,
a piano with silent keys,

a hawk folding from the sky onto barren ground,
a sunflower staring into a clouded noon, unable to find the sun.

And stil…,

Many of us reach that shoulder of the highway where striving finally sputters.
Deadlines become desert winds.

Worries become rust in the engine.
We pull over beneath a vast horizon

and sit among the weeds of exhaustion,
after caffeine, distraction,

and stubbornness have failed as temporary fuels.

Then…

Somewhere beyond the dust, love appears—
like headlights blooming through twilight,
like a traveler carrying a can of gold fire for a stranded soul.

A gentle word, a patient embrace,

a faithful presence fills the tank drop by drop,
until motion returns and the journey remembers its direction.

Perhaps life itself is a Dust Bowl designed by Nature to test our refueling grace,
to see whether we can reclaim green fields from seasons of drought.
We borrow strength from friends, from rest, from mercy, from hope's clear spring,
yet the deepest emptiness often waits much closer to home.

The cruelest shortage is not always energy, opportunity, or time,
but the compassion we deny ourselves.
Too many wander with full skies above and untapped wells below,
forgetting that self-love is the fuel beneath every horizon—
the fill-it-up inspiration that brings the stalled senses roaring back to life.