Tuesday, December 29, 2020

I wrote this for a friend

I keep looking for myself elsewhere
People keep telling me to keep looking 
But I keep losing myself elsewhere

I don't know how that happens when
I've never even felt like I've found
myself
enough to lose
myself

Yet I keep looking and losing but 
for once I would like to find something 
worth keeping
to be found
worth keeping

The darkening makes
me feel worth
discarding

It's lonely here

But you find me here
Over and over again

You walk with me
On paths my feet know too well
Through the dark all night

The dawning makes
me feel worth
something

Maybe everything
Because you gave everything to
Find me and
Keep me and
Show me that you
Found me
Worth keeping–
Till the end

"I am with you always, even to the end of the age."



Friday, December 4, 2020

only tonight

I catch my breath 
As the air pours through the windows


And it hits me out of the nowhere

How many more times in my life will I get this view on a night like this


When the fields smell of fresh grass and damp earth and old hay
And the crickets are singing
To the darkness or the moon or each other


How many more drives home 
When home is a simple word 
When home is a place with people you love 
And it is home


It hits me like a bag of cement to the gut
You’re going to miss this


Everything is changing
And it happens so fast
And we wish it away
For the next the better the best


But it never comes 
Because there is only today 

And today is all we get

Only tonight-
The thin clouds
The lone star
The invisible brightness
Headlights on the road
One hour down
On the way home
On the threshold of summer


Because all of a sudden two years from now is a week from Tuesday 
And nothing's ever going to be the same


So let me breathe in the air
And let tonight be tonight
Let me drive the roads of monotony
And let it settle in my bones
Let me feel it while it’s here
Let me ache let me cry let me bang my head against the steering wheel turn the music up run my hands through my hair and be still 


Let me know that I am alive
And these are the days
These are my days
God-- don’t let them slip away