change

How very convenient this distance—
because of matters in your life
you find me appalling
and because of issues with myself
I happen to agree.

Little else need be said, certainly
beyond the barest niceties
that swathe our days in ways
of civility, enabling time to pass
with slightly less suffering.

Except that here and now
this me still breathes as beads
of angry sweat cloud my brow
and my skin shivers with fear
of a life unchanged.

The sky is bluer this day
than I have seen for so long,
and if I could, I would gladly
reach up and pull it down
as a gentle warming shroud.

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everything changes

He looks back now
at the words he once wrote
with such effusive passion
and dauntless hope
in the heady days of youth
when life felt endless
and love eternal.

In one regard, I must say,
he breathes easier now,
at least for a time,
knowing so much better
what ideals really mean
and what it is that hope,
in all honesty, represents.

Those whose hearts
breathe blissful being,
careless of tomorrows,
may yet happily know
the fulsome joys
of love so very pure
and unrestrained.

But everything changes,
and nothing weighs down
with greater severity
than to see the ponderous
decay of primal passion
when the light of adoration
is slowly extinguished.

Change

I mind an avenue of trees
rising deftly beyond the sun
and the sense that today
is tomorrow, and tomorrow
has quite capriciously gone.

I remember the leaves
tickling briskly the tips
of my calloused fingers
and how I marveled enviously
at their ever changing colors.

Intently I stared at the blue
of the sky overhead,
distinguishing at last that
precious moment when clouds
turn colder than snow.

But what mattered most of all
as the fallen leaves settled
beneath my feet and found peace
was the recognition that green
is still green and always will be.

Except when it is blue.

when summer came

i have seen these stars before
painted on too brittle walls
that wept when summer came
wept for the passing spring
fearing that this time of ours
would never come again

i have watched this moon before
illuminating the quiet night
while jealous stars circled
the vast heavens in dismay
tracing fading lines of finality
across the back of forever

i have knelt below the sun
beneath the finest domes
of tiles most intricately laid
echoing the oneness of god
while concealing the crudeness
of my unexamined soul

and when the year unhurried still
did finally pass into spring
i opened my heart once more
and danced beneath the trees
chanting to the fertile moon
who forgives my every sin

along the coast of Çeşme, Türkiye