I walked and saw a house today

Once wreathed in gardens fair

That time and trial and long neglect

Left seized by waste and wear

i’m learning how

to let go

of all the things 

that might have been

instead of dwelling in

the changeless past

Shall I greet another day

As like unto the last

Where all mine hours doth flee away

And slip into the past?

nobody ever tells you

that one day

you’ll try to imagine yourself young

and find

that you can’t

Darkness! O, that thou wouldst bear me

On swiftest wings, black and despairing,

Unto the blessed stoop of Death’s sad door

To rest at last below the loam

In peaceful sleep, sorrows unknown,

Blanketed ‘neath the green and grassy sward.

Upon a road not often tread

A weary traveler hangs his head

And as he walks he hums a mournful tune.

A song about his homeland fair,

And how his wand’ring shall end there;

He prays that he might gaze upon it soon.

Pity the wretch whose flesh

Forges a mind of death,

Stealing their very breath

Whilst they sink under—

Ravaged and plundered!

Once when I was a child

I caught a butterfly in a net

in our backyard.

The shadows loom long, tenebrous and cold,

You break ‘neath the weight of burdens untold,

The darkness grows restless, bloodthirsty and bold,

Here in Death’s Shadow Valley.

There is a place of darkness dreary

Where I wander, weak and weary,

Desperate for someplace to lay my head.

Your ways, O Lord, are not our own;

We’d not have chosen had we known

The struggle into which we have been born,

For daily we partake of death,

And find our souls robbed of their rest

’Til wretched, weary, sinful and forlorn…

Tonight I watched a thunderstorm.

Soft rain pittered and pattered down onto the thankful grass

and onto the unyielding gray sidewalk, still warm from the day,

and onto my shoulders and the backs of my legs

which grew chilly when the breeze kissed them,

raising goosebumps on my bare arms

that I tried to hug away.