It's been a long time since the muse or cold reality
has driven me from my bed to scratch my fear.
A cold wind creeps under the door tonight
and drives the transient to murmur its name to the transient.
We sit in a house with all we've collected
to prove ourselves permanent and to drive ourselves
deeper into the ever present now.
Now ... least the pattern become too apparent,
least the mirror catch us whole.
For we are erosion in motion, the resumption of dust,
the gathering of less and less.
I struggled with my pillow tonight against the clarity.
And with every turn came another view,
with every dismissal, another insight of mortality
like a sword through curtains.
Very little is under my control,
save how I ride the failing machinery.
I felt the weight of my gut and relived the photos
of an older man than I know.
The young, the lithe, the sure, the strong
fill my mind's eye's long delusion.
Year after year ...
it changes so slowly, I cannot admit.
We draw on with grace, we draw on with sloth,
with gluttony, with materialism, with work and projects,
with dreams of fame, of making an impact,
of impressing others.
All of these ...
but, we press on.
An increasingly narrower place, the road of clarity,
our deepest animal urge doomed by awareness.
We are left with what's left
or denial.
I want so for it to matter, but it will not.
Against the bigger scenery, we are but shadows,
tiny sparks of awareness from the fire of evolution.
A momentary knowing against the implacable;
the improbable and transient standing
against that which cannot register us.
In all these years since Dylan Thomas said,
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light",
I've finally heard him clearly, but I doubt his advice.
Grace or terror, denial or courage,
comfort to give away, or the lack of to mourn.
Beyond here, lies a truth and an embrace
that only I can encounter.
God grant me the wisdom and courage
to be loving and honest in this place.
gallagher
20 Feb 2007
Monroe
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
