The poems of the past

No longer reveal the inner workings

Of this man’s mind.

Thoughts have been outgrown

Like clothing

Discarded for the local charity.

Feelings that at one time reflected

hopes and dreams of an ideal life

Have become disowned orphans.

Tears shed for past people

Have long since dried.

Lost loves now live

Out of sight

Out of mind

Divorced from the rejection

That permeates the soul.

Younger faces now age with me

Like a hitchhiker who climbs aboard

Riding along, completing the journey.

Births and deaths stand

Along the shoreline of a life;

Memories lap up along the sand.

Pledges of past paramours

Wash out to an ocean

That has sustained thousands of sunrises.

Prayers fly off into a far-flung future

That only a personal God can see

in His infinite view.

There on the landscape of life

I stand, struggling

To identify the nature

Of the best of all possible worlds.

Image by George Cassutto
Copyright 2010
Used with Permission