Friday, October 24, 2014

PEAKS AND VALLEYS

PEAKS AND VALLEYS

How like me, how like us all,
To forget our life before the Fall,
To keep the memory of each mistake,
To mind the dregs and forget the great.

I once held a sleeping bird in my arm,
Fragile and so very sweet,
It trembled lost for just awhile,
And then surrendered to its sleep,

I once rescued a teddy bear,
At least that's what they tell me.
A teddy bear being tossed by bullies,
I did my best to set it free.

Still sometimes I feel so worthless,
Fodder for the cobwebs and the dark black alleys.
How like me, how like us all,
To forget the peaks and mind the valleys. 

I once helped a drunken man to his shuffling feet,
His body crumpled sleeping in the middle of my street.
I gave him a lift to a 7-Eleven, he called his son on the pay phone.
Hopefully he was taken in and found his way back home.
Some darkness falls in every life, with grace its humble midwife,
We remember the sordid brothels, forget the bright boutiques,
How like me, how like us all, to cling to the valleys, forget the peaks.

Now I am lost to Parkinson's and a slave to failing health,
A bully of another sort who operates with a wondrous stealth.
Who creeps around the back alleys here in my mind,
Crippling the body, with methodical decline,
Counting down the days with an arm as rigid as a pipe,
Lucky for the disappearing art of committing words to type.

I have some high school glory days that I vaguely recall,
A college life of some achievement, friends still with me through it all,
A lover who I'll cherish until the day I perish.
Sometimes, though, the good times go by in such a blur,
I remember my sweet mother, I still can treasure her.
Still sometimes i'm so bereft that I can barely stand,
Painful memories weave a web, I am trapped within the strands.
When thoughts are so undisciplined, they compel a soul to kneel,
And conjure up a deep, dark future, gray and funereal.
Like the layers of an onion they begin to slowly peel.

How like me, how like us all, to strike ourselves upon the head,
To weep as in a deep, dark sleep, to wish that we were dead.
To remember every lost ideal and every second wind forget,
To always ponder all the things that we have not done yet.

I once held a sleeping bird in my arms,
Fragile and so very sweet,
It shook with a mighty tremor,
Then sighed and fell asleep.
When it awoke, it flew away,
High into the clouds of a brand new day.

Why then do I still feel worthless,
Fodder for the cobwebs and the dark black alleys.
How like me, how like us all,
To forget the peaks and mind the valleys.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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