Worlds Away

what the nomad brought home

To the rooftops!…

Time.
Every sinking sun heralds another day that I will never know
And yet that I’ve already lived.
Like a farcical princess in a real dungeon—
A refugee
Of the all-consuming, merciless beast terrorizing the sacred hillsides below—
I watch from my window
As the bleeding sky before my eyes
Fades somewhere else into a festive night
Of friends, of music, of spontaneity, of life.
And while the spirits of ignorance dance, and whirl and meld,
And crescendo into the colorful laughter of abandon,
My own voice, my own form are absent,
While I watch and ponder the fate
Of the beaten, the violated, the penniless –
Because, tonight, their dusk, their chill is mine.
And we are all together.
And we are all alone.
And we are all forgotten.
And I learn all too late that the height of a cloudless summer
Is a time I would infinitely rather spend in the damp cover of the glistening snow,
And that yet another night delivered on the icy tails of the autumn wind,
Leads at this very moment into a joyous spring that I will never regain
And binds me, helpless, to the certainty that these
Are hours I will never recover.
So now that I—
My dreams, my soul, my hopes, my passions—
Have become, for myself, simply too much,
The fear twists deep within me that I’m still so very far from enough
And that perhaps it’s too late to prove
That I ever might be.

 

 “Listen as the wind blows from across the great divide — voices trapped in yearning, memories trapped in time.  The night is my companion and solitude, my guide.  Would I spend forever here and not be satisfied?”  — Sarah McLachlan (Opening lyrics of “Possession”)

July 26, 2007 Posted by | Memories, Poetry, Solitude, Time, Writing | , , , , | Leave a comment