Until My Dying Day

Why would I leave this paradise to go

To where they say I’d be a fool to go?

With no one casting me out.

But  in a fool’s paradise

Overlooking those in need,

 What fearful hard-heads don’t realize,

What the selfishly unhealthy can’t understand:

That life in an unchanging replica, 

Brings misfortune to the pariah 

For those who think it lasts forever.

I have to keep on moving out of  forecast range

As animals feel earthquakes before they arrive

And verify omens out of our reach.

When men on the chessboard tell us where to go,

We must tune in to frequencies on pirate radio

Without  concern that it is in vain.

I will leave and feel no pain,

May it always stay this way

Until my dying day.

 

Dedicated to Mary Catherine

September 22, 2020

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A World of Change

See live first rendition here 

A pen is too permanent for a world of change

When discoveries and detours are unknown

Beyond the bread and butter issues at home

Who knows where I will roam?

 

An opportune virus opens the door

Quarantined in a hotel to avoid the bends

Decompressing in conditioned air

Holed up like Marco Polo with stories from there

 

Pencil me in to the bottom of the ninth

With the home team down by a run

One hit will tie the score

That is what erasers are for

 

A death in the family would hold be back

Or a gallbladder cyst in need of removal

The orange sun setting in a Taichung sky

As orange clouds o’er Portland drift by

 

Fire needs fuel to keep it bright

A spirit renewed to carry me through

I am burning to see my regeneration

To shatter my porcelain vase of fixation

 

As I sit balanced on the river’s edge

A bridge to developments yet uncrossed

Bats overhead to and fro in their dances

The river between us rolls on taking chances

 

As I sit over here in suspended animation

Watching wispy clouds in the teal of dusk

Migrating birds in formation southerly

To this startled onlooker it seems suddenly

 

The flock knows how they are heading

Not forgetting when and whither

But I take chances with uncharted fate

The Tao’s has good intentions so I mustn't hesitate

 

Write me with pencil in the book of life

Smite my enemies on the road I travel

Nudge me aside from foolish pride

Up and front with nothing to hide

 

A pen is too final for writing a story

Space bar and delete key on the P.C. sticking

As the plot thickens, my character develops

By the true light my intention envelopes

September 14, 2020

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In Debt to David Graeber

 

Shortened days darkened

Prospects diminished

Street lights illuminated

Chances finished

Change succumbing

Crescendo drumming

My heart stinging

For one died bringing

David Graeber departed

Before the party started

Sustenance withholding

With glory unfolding

Sunset west persisting

Despite all our resisting

Rising morning east

He made his magnificence

When he sought it least

September 8, 2020

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Once the Great Cedar

 

Hear live first rendition here

Once the teenage tree

Reaching out,

Stretching its branches,

Full of succulent leaves.

A host for nesting birds

On their way to other branches,

in a cacophony of cicadas.

And insects, crawling,

Being hunted by birds and other insects. 

Caterpillars engorging themselves in leaves,

Wrapped in cocoons and falling to the ground

to metamorphose into moths, butterflies.

This canopy of dense deep green

Attracting dwellers underneath

In need of rest,

 In need of shade on sunny days.

Through seasons of thickening trunk,

Withstanding wind and rain, and thunderbolts,

Gather into a forest,

Seeding soil carried in brooks,

Around a village through its tributaries.  

Until the darkness past shooting stars

Reaches an apex of life,

Strained by obsessions,

Depleted of its qualities,

Fissures forming,

Cracks splitting it open

As sap, harvested, drizzles down its bark

Into  hollowed termite housing,

Till branches, brittle,

Begin to flail in frail health,

Frozen and abandoned through too many winters.

A last fall foliage pleads to onlookers:

“See me for the last time!”

Alas, naked and grotesque,

But a holy tree to the elders

That shared the journey

From childhood looking upward,

To evenly aroused wisdom of longevity,

When countable branches remain,

And roots become strained,

Until the last cone bursts open,

In flames,

Of inter-generational pain.

September 1, 2020

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Copyright © 2020 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved