You

The days and nights now merge
Trouble and torment cascade together
Sadness and sorrow but a fond memory
The sage’s quill slowly writes
Words trace out upon invisible parchment
Ink drying before the sentence becomes complete
How odd time has become
Blind eyes seeing clearer that those from sparkling youth
The Lord gratefully granting skill in both hands
Even as the right ends its useful purpose
The left grows more in skill

I digress…

The books stack together upon the bench. Many completed for their story was short. The few that remain unfinished will perhaps never conclude. Those that believe being granted everlasting life for Death and Hell have long since past.

The Sage puts down his pen…

Pat sat comfortably in his chair. The chickens and geese happy to be out roaming the yard blessing him with ruckus crowing and the pleasant clucking of a satisfied hen. The only distraction from this pastoral paradise being the occasional black ant foraging up between pants and sock.

“Those little bastards…”

The Watcher paced about nervously. His mind distracted by the events not yet seen…

“No. That’s not right. Events not yet witnessed to.” The Sage correcting thoughts even as the scroll unrolls.

The Watcher’s pacing unaltered continues on. Even as that which is false is spoken of so too the doer is busy exalting of himself. Money and power are of this world. No greater chains were ever forged in the darkest pit. How vain those people are to trust and believe in the words of their own mouth, and works of their own hands.

“I have been here for a very long time. I have watched as the light has filtered in through the many seams and cracks of this reality. I have watched as the myriad faces flowed by. Often our eyes locking for an instant then timidly released by you in sudden fear. I see you. I know what it is to be you. Like a shadow your fate and mine are bound. There is no escape.

“I am as you are as you are as I am.”
Wise words from an even wiser man who saw only after he was blind.

This I say to you, “Repent! The glass, darkly obscuring, soon shall be removed, and you will know even as you are known.”

The Garden of Our Youth

Where have the flowers of spring gone?
Those were the days of our youth.
Spent in the hope of something better. Only to be wasted by those who did not understand their value.

Memorials On Tracing Paper

Short words on a long day

Doors closed on faded memories

Listened to quiet hello’s

Silent good-byes

Young children and older siblings

Watched the wind blow through the spring leaves

Yellow daffodils visited by the honey bee

Remembered young faces to be put with old bodies

Cried because that’s the thing to do

A Beautiful Day

I wander down forgotten trails 
Searching out forgotten tales 
Weary feet carry on 
Beyond each bend and twisting turn 
In every moment 
I retrace 
The memory of this magic place

Furrowed Fields

It wasn’t that long ago for me
I still remember
Summer fields fresh plowed
Planted with seed
Green tips slipping upwards
Little fingers grasping for sun
Watchful of the blackbirds
Grey-brown grasshoppers slowly grazing
Very much like an errant cow
Turned into the wrong field
Yes
I remember tripping over the tilled furrow
Clumsily wandering about my chores
Daydreaming about some other life
The future
Now here I am
Oddly wandering in my golden years
Picking through each furrow of my mind
One moment I am the locust
Next the slow grazing cow
Searching out each savory grain
Every tender green wisp
Until reality wakens me
And the startled crow
Nimble and quick
Takes flight
Gleaning away another memory
Forgotten

The Grass Grows Tall

Distant hills and ridge lines fade into the hazy grey of hot humidity
White clover edges out the crimson in their number
The yellow-black stripping of the bees competes quietly with the hummingbird for nectar
Lost among the slender tubes of honeysuckle and trumpeter vine
I find myself content to watch the pale lime green of buds transform from winters brown nodules into verdant colors of hand sized leaf
Even the constant change of sky
First downcast in early morning fog
Then radiant golden as sun blazes through
Only to once again darken by the approach of rain

These bring me happiness
All the while measuring the width and height of the labor to come

In the Garden

Thinking about spring
I find it all described with words an old man would use
The cool crisp air mixing softly with the early morning mist
Each petal of the paperwhite daffodil
Contrasts solid and hard with it’s yellow cousin
Here and there a bumble bee prowls
Tiny droplets of pollen and dew cling to her sides
Even as busy buzzing wings brush back the careless hand
Distracted by the beauty of the rising sun

Come November, from The Book of Pat

The soft muzzled cough brought Alice back from being lost in her usual daydreams.
It had been months since she had walked freely about the streets. Even longer since the blind run through the dark forests of another world.
If this insane self-imposed quarantine had to continue for very much longer, Alice was going to leap back through into the brightly lit hall beyond. Once there she was more than willing to try her luck at some other random doorway.
“What then?” muttered the low voice of the sage.
Alice could tell he was talking more to himself than to her.
Alice replied anyway, “Anywhere but here.”

The look of the old mages floor length beard partially muzzled by a soft swath of mask looked ridiculous. The rope ties for the ears could not reach so Alice had helped him braid the ends into the facial hair just beneath the cheeks.
The effect gave the ancient librarian a hipster grunge look.
The ink stained hands of the sage had been hard at work rubbing his face again. Either an allergy from the ink that now tinted his nose or from the dreaded Covid virus had been making the elderly gentleman wheeze and cough. He had coughed enough times that Alice had demanded the face covering.
The sage grumpily complied just to silence her complaining.
The whole request struck him funny since it came from a woman wearing no clothes at all…

The doorman had been busy hanging invisible signs about the hall. Each had been hung so that an individual entering could see them with little effort. He was certain when the complaint department was called he would be found blameless in the spread of such ignorance. Each entry had been clearly marked with a request for a mandatory fourteen day quarantine, and each infectious destination properly marked.
The Gatekeeper had even replaced his usual Welcome mat with one that read, “Masks Required”.
“Yes”, he thought, “in a reality of inexistence the flattened curve wasn’t going to catch him in another surge, hoax or not.”

Pat sat watching the falling leaves. The peace autumn brought was a welcome change from the dry hot days of summer. Still the thought to lay naked in those golden rays made his pulse quicken with youthful memories.

“The seasons change with the turn of a word,” he whispered to the quiet room. Though there was a large crowd, no one heard him.

Pat was aware that the sentence could be thought of as political, as well as environmental.
Opinions were changing. Impatient populations desperate for a miracle.
Come November another four years of greatness would be chosen. Hopefully one that meant the destruction of a party founded in racism. If not then things weren’t going to look too good for the home front.
It had been bad enough that this man-made virus was unleashed by corrupt policies of the criminal elite in the attempt of a one-world-order coup.
To have to suffer under the heavy-handed tactics of the cosmopolitan could lead to an actual armageddon between good and evil…

Pat watched the falling leaves. The beauty was not wasted on him. The mix of yellows and reds drifting down. Sometimes in soft spirals, sometimes in a direct glide. Individual leaves and groups all randomly blowing about with a kaleidoscope of color.
None of the meaning was missed.
Everything had a purpose;
Pat just had his own preference in how things should end.

All this change from the green leaves of one tree. Nothing was ever missed…