*The Year*

A day, a year, a life
are so much alike,
just a beginning
moving toward an end.

Whether at 20 or 90,
each year, each life
is watching time
flash before the eyes.

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*Voices*

I can almost hear it,
your voice.
But the one voice
I thought I’d forever remember
seems only like a whispered breeze now,
what was once here may be forever gone.

**********

*Exile*

These poetry manacles
of paper and ink
have been my Beatrice.

I hate myself for what
I haven’t written
and doubt the value
of what I have.
I’m exiled.

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*Afterlife*

Full circle I’ve come,
tales that were once told to comfort,
to avert thoughts of the imminent finite
I decided were childish.
Now I want those child-tales to be true again:
that we will meet again.

**********

Spent Autumn flowers
swaying in the chilling wind;
Winter blowing in.

**********

Decades seem so long
‘fore they pass and while they do;
then, one day they’re gone.

**********

The wind rocks the seeds,
one last lullaby to sing;
a year’s dream begins.

**********

In the autumn woods
all’s a-shake with winds blowing;
Winter coming soon.

**********

Walking in the woods
with a friend was my ideal;
now i walk alone.

**********

Here before Winter
before the gray, before snow;
anticipation.

**********

In a warm refuge
I sit, watching for a change;
Winter almost here.

**********

As I walk my path
I talk with you as before;
no answers coming.

**********

In the quiet woods
life surrounds me all astir;
quiet in and out.

**********

Pine needles hanging
like brown spiraled icicles;
melt slowly to earth.

**********

Through difficult times,
in days of pain, in dark woe;
we look to a child.

**********

On dark, dismal days
we light our candles of hope;
love burns bright within.