Back in school, cheat sheets tempted us
with answers to questions at our fingertips.
Oh, to have a life cheat sheet!
Access to answers to life’s toughest questions.
A chance to ace all the exams.
Tag Archives: life
Rough Road
The sign was there to warn us,
but not everyone paid attention, and anyway,
we need to get to the end
of this rough road. And it’s hard.
Grip the wheel. And keep moving forward.
What the tree leaves behind
after many autumns, winters and final fall
is rings – a dendrochronology of historical context,
environmental conditions, and possible future issues.
Earlywood, latewood, drought year, wet year, diseases –
no soul, but a body outliving life.
No Lifeguard on Duty
A beach day reminder that no one
is guarding this life. The news full
of elections that don’t matter. and killings
that do, but, compelled to move forward,
somehow we swim at our own risk.
Two Lifetimes
Today the farthest is closest to us.
Unseen by naked eyes, undiscoverable by observation.
Known by calculation, prediction and some faith.
Frozen home for a banished sea god.
Neptune, both our years, now, two lifetimes.
Though I was using Neptune’s closest passing of the year today as the starting place for this poem, I was thinking about someone who died recently. I felt a connection between Neptune’s orbit of about 165 years being like two lifetimes, and my lifetime being combined with the one lost. Both of them unseen, but a presence felt, if not by calculation, then by a faith in some prediction that there is something out there beyond this world.
