DEPARTURES

DEPARTURES

Skies hold unfathomable mysteries.

You will know what I mean if you've looked closely.

 So many clouds move across the sky like little bath toys

Sailing in God's blue bath water.

I wish the clouds would stay still

For just a little longer than they do.

I am setimental about clouds,

More sentimental about the people I love.

That's why I'm troubled by all these comings and goings

I like the illusion that things stay the same.

But every time I turn around I'm confronted with the fact

That the only thing of permanence is change.

Friends come, then fade to black.

Lovers float in and out of my consciousness,

Speaking softly their untimely departures.

i would have liked to have held them, but they wriggled and squirmed in my arms,

Afraid of being trapped by gray-haired time.

I hold them fondly when I roll in dreams, but I sleep fitfully,

Knowing they are insufficient ghosts.

Life holds unfathomable mysteries.

Who knows why I had to leave a place and time where I was joyous,

Why I've come to ponder clouds,

To beat my brains against brick walls,

In search of hidden meanings.

I'm sentimental about life, more sentimental about the places I've left behind.

I remember every corridor, every portrait, and every human touch.

I recall my past; I cry because my past does not remember me.

Places come, then fade to black.

Colors and smells float in and out of my consciousness,

Triggering dreams and fantasies.

Past events, like eerie ghosts, tap my shoulder late at night,

Speaking softly their untimely departures.

-Bruce Potts

Copyright 2024

ALL RIGHTS  RESERVED 

THE OLD MAN

THE OLD MAN

The old man in me, is sick and tired
Of riding high and living huge,
Tired and so dissatisfied
With secrets and with subterfuge.

The old man in me, he fusses and fumes.
The past he digs up and exhumes,
Turns it over in his head,
Sides with the dying and the dead.

The old man in me is scared of chihuahuas,
Cringes at little lap dogs,
Pot bellied pigs on leashes,
Alligators in the bogs.
The old man in me cringes,
Comes off his creaky hinges,
Flees when there's a knock on his door,
Shies away from anything more,
Than a luncheon date with friends.
The old man in me roams his neighborhood streets,
With proclamations of the end.

The old man in me is up for Chinese checkers,
Too dumb for the rigors of chess,
The old man he dreams of a wrecking ball,
Demolishing all he loves best.
The old man in me he dreams of his youth,
Determined to dig for ancient truth,
Fearless of what he might find.
The old man in me gets short of breath,
Rants and raves with his cane raised in air,
The old man in me knows no respite,
From the deep dark hole of mad despair.

There's a young man in me, buried deep.
Who I sometimes visit in my sleep.
He's buried in the dirt and the muddy grime,
Lost in the abyss of aimless time.
The old man in me knows it's wrong,
To long for when he was young and headstrong.
He staggers onward, trying to cope,
With the smothering, silent loss of hope.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED