My115thDream

Dave's Mental Meanderings
2004-08-05 23:31:33 (UTC)

Poem - "What Lies Ahead"

Down in the shade when the clouds start to fade
With the afternoon temperature rising,
Detached from it all as I watch the great squall
Recede to the western horizon.
Silently staked at my sidewalk spot
Where the crowd has long since ignored me,
Listless and easy but missing the breeze
That the mountains can always afford me.
In failing to conjure a carbon copy
Of memories my mind often renders,
I see there’s no way to deal with the past
But unconditional surrender.
The slow march of time leaves no man behind
And old friends become of the new,
Proudly they walk on the sidewalks of life
From whose cracks together we grew.
One by one they turn as they run
To catch a last look at my face,
We’ve got nothing to do but solemnly scatter
And surrender our youth with grace.
We’d do well to let slip our midnight visions
Where we’re going we’ll no longer need them,
The nightmare road soon won’t bear the load
Of what once were the pictures of freedom.
Such are the thoughts that weight heavily now
But haven’t yet quite taken hold
As I sit in my room in the afternoon gloom
With photographs that now seem so old.
When I venture outside ‘neath the low evening sun
I’m met with further reminders,
Sights that will age into dusty old prints
For those who now call us old-timers.
The laughing and crying and holy upheavals
That we all gave up long ago,
They mirror the memories of my own, now cast
In the light of nostalgia’s soft glow.
We must toss to the tide our free-wheeling days
For soon we’ll come to the shore,
But me, I’ve still got that old traveling bone
And there’s still some more magic in store.
For a few more days I’ll lay low in the haze
Living a life less frantic,
At the end of the week, still high so to speak,
I’ll be airborne across the Atlantic.
Without thinking twice I’ll heed the advice
That I’ve given myself many times,
Bury the dead, for it’s what lies ahead
That will one day fill up the rhymes.




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