Rendered Leaves

Sulfur lights candles on the altar.
Hands fold yellow, blue, and pink,
paper and pipe cleaner flowers,
drape intricate tissue cutouts
over edges of one soul’s journey.
Smudge some sage or cannabis
over a dusty favorite fifth
of bourbon, vodka, or tea.
Sugar skull grins, shows its teeth
to photographs and sweet breads,
to fetishes and wooden beads.
Black wax clings to aqua blue,
and children’s fingers track edges
and faces of memento-heart cakes.

It is the slow silent time after life.
Pulp yields to its yearly harvest
and mythology adapts a new suit.
Brief with moments of reason,
moments of sorrow and bliss,
she comes on like autumn.
Leaves drop like feathery tears
and then one-day, a strong breeze,
a random gale, and all are down.
Branches bare to sun and snow,
sleep the short days away.

Identity is vigor in moments,
the metrics of heat and history,
wonderment and fresh breathe.
The spark transforms and remains,
but self blows to dust in winter winds
like so many forgotten, rendered leaves.

Turning 50

           “The Savoy Express rolls down track number 4. ALL ABOARD.” My last few days in the forties and memories of everything until now color my mood and fogs recall with soft focus. No single incident, but a continuous flutter of moments pass as if through the window of a passenger car. It’s a blur with occasion detail and color, unless I gaze further a field at the Grandest View or the Mother of all Delusion. Where did the time go? Did it matter and did I accomplish anything at all? How do you measure the success of your life?

           I am not sure if there are metrics for those questions? I know that material things never satisfy, but only wet the appetite. Desire is insatiate, and shallow comfort rewards complacency and boredom. All is vanity; it is its own worst enemy that feasts upon itself. Knowledge is a good cause, but it to is only the filter of someone else’s experience. Lots of people know lots of things that I never hope to nor would want to know, and they don’t seem any happier for it.

           It could be that I am asking the wrong question. A single lifetime is its only true expression, good and bad, happy and sad, or success and not. Does wisdom come from devouring as much experience as possible while clearing the filters that protect the self-journey or something else? I know it is the journey, but the mind must have its catalogue and metrics. I have succeeded at being exactly where I wanted to be; I just need to find a way to accept it. I am where I need to be at this moment on these paths. Where else is just so much wankery.

           So at 50, I have to finally throw off childish expectations and desires, move on with my life. I have to stop asking these questions expecting that I am going to find or figure out the answer. I have to believe that wherever my life may lead is enough.