Staple of a life lived well

May's offering at The Granary.

Staple of a life lived well,

binding together both frontal an rear sheaths of skin

as they sense breezes, smell lilacs, or taste onions

and upon aging, glad of the constant pain in the hip

(it reminds one of life lived)

as long as the pain isn’t too sharp, like when spurred to a trot

or forced to feel the effects of a falling barometer.

Still, reclining on the grass in a park by the sea,

The wheels turn early

as the sun mounts his chariot

wind changing direction,

bells on the fishing boats returning to port

agitating the filaments of wakefulness

and bringing hunger for movement.

Like an unusual organ removed years ago while we slept

Every so often I reach back to wipe the sweat and feel the scar

yet tender-

and on occasion, I stretch to scratch and pull the hand back red with blood

so that while blood runs, seldom do I recall why or when or how that part was removed,

Or what it was, really;

perhaps it was worth it…

Many ghosts follow

like warm or unduly chill breezes on dark summer nights

or out of place, colorful insects at midwinter

calling my forgotten parts back from a place

far away and inaccessible.

How can the old and new join to marry my lost and disjointed members

as run the hues of an autumnal sunset

in January’s decline and lingering nights?

It is all paint laid on, layer after layer,

shade within color and hue-

I know by heart a few strained descriptions of the refuge that remains

and consistently avert the gazes of those and that which has passed.

We are all somehow programmed for stardom with a view of the sea-

and even at this point in the race, my view feels sometimes like a big-screen image on a twin sheet, suspended in the garden.

This life could be so much more-

and at the insistence of this description,

taking our landscape and peeling it back like a wrapper,

we each learn that we lean on this beautiful scaffold

for just long enough.