Mapquest

Sometimes



when you're in love
it's hard to find your way around
sometimes it's dark
sometimes it's bright
sometimes there's a "you are here" sign
and sometimes not


it's important to know
when in love
or just visiting,


feeling lost


is part of the process
to finding your way
love seems so easy
to say
to feel
to write
but it's got back alleys
and shady ghettos,
just don't forget its penthouses too


mostly
being in love
is exactly what it sounds like
warm, fuzzy, never lonely
even when you think
you're lost



you're never really lost



and you're never
really alone
i love
being in love
and hope i never


really lose my way

Consider

Consider the gaseous
gravity of a new star
violently coming into being
cradled in the delicate
tapestry of a nebula.
Stellar Nursery.

It pulls and sucks in
particles and such
from millions of miles
around it's churning
empty stomach
Craving all matter to
sink to it's core
ignite flames
and jettison itself
into existence
With combustion and
enough heat to blaze
thousands of Earths to dust!

This orb of hell looms
in it's cosmic crib
consuming and destroying
its mother with white hot teeth
This sphere gives light
Light that is millions of miles around
Billions of miles deep
Fire so strong
not even the vacuum of space
can choke it

So violent this entity!
And yet only a sparkle
in it's galaxy's eye
One part of One trillion
floating around,
spiraling endlessly
being a part of a greater whole.
Lighting one tiny corner of
an incandescent galaxy

This galaxy, home to this newborn,
Is itself trillions of times larger
than our violent newborn
This galaxy twirls on its axis
at it's core, a black hole
sucking in all that it can
Even light.

But what light does escape
let's say, from our new born,
joins the light from its brothers
leaps out into the empty space
not between stars
but between other galaxies

This light, in brilliant invisible rays
and rods and spirals
travels not by distance
no, it's too great to measure in miles,
but by time.
this newborn light,
now millions of years old,
travels across the cosmos
and finally reaches the Milky Way

It has to compete with other stars
other closer, brighter lights
shining towards one Sun in a trillion stars
It makes its way,
year after million year
to clutter the skies of planets
who cling tightly to their warm center

these stars
sprinkle the night sky of earth.
Earth, who's blushing with
virgin green life
and sweating gallons of new water
That gave life to animals
who gave life to invention
who gave life to poetry.

Who look up at the sky,
and draw inspiration from
a single dot above them
singing to them,
writing about them,
exploiting their incomprehensibly
long journeys

And that fiery inferno
who destroyed its delicate mother
and joined forces with other
fiery infernos
falls so gently into our eyes
and makes patterns of
beautiful creatures

Consider
that ancient light now dead.
Those stars and galaxies we see
are ancient ghosts
spectral images of what is no longer there
that our children's children will have
whole new skies to look up to.

Consider
the family on the other end
who will see our light millions of years from now
will they too write about our beauty?
We'll never know

Consider
in our brief second of life
to look for beauty for which
we can write and sing

Consider
the fires here on Earth
all around us,
much closer, much warmer
much prettier than stars out there.

It's all just science really
and fire and light
and gravity

all things we have
right here
between us

willows

In golden valley turns the leaf
on winding roads through autumn's spree
though the sojourn may be brief
I'll let the willows weep for me

O'er mountains to the forest end
far away from southern sea
as wintered trunks will twist and bend
I'll let the willows weep for me

our path will end on bitter grounds
and split the distance, we'll agree.
lost in nature, we'll be around
I'll let the willows weep for me.