Know That I Loved Life

Know that I stood in the painted caves in which they dwelt and took a bit of them away

I felt them as they stood behind me, hands upon my shoulder, helping to point my way

I saw fully my own short cycle in the informal death of insects and other forms of life

I knew eternity in the long pause between metronomic, meditative breaths

Know that I have felt life so very strongly that it has brought me to tears

I have loved and been loved for all of my best years

I have howled to the wind, the stars and the vast cold emptiness above

I caught sideways glances at the eternity into which my consciousness always slid

Know that my nostrils quivered and I needed to run off in the cool twilight

I understood that I wasted the vast proportion of the tiny time allotted to me

I watched those who gave me life as they showed me how I, too, must pass away

I struggled with and worried over unimportant issues, for far too many years

Know that I take the shame of certain actions with me as stones I cannot grind

I thank all of those, anonymous or dear, who always helped me in my blindness

I plunged onwards reckless and without direction too full of selfish cynicism

I came very late upon some small understanding of those who just quietly do what is right

Know that I could not accept my weakness and imperfections for far too long

But I was engulfed by the silence between the clock ticks on a Winter afternoon

I had to totally lose my way to realize I had never considered where I was going

I only began to escape my emptiness when at last it began to fill me up

         

Know that I was ever grateful for the sentience blindly granted me by the life force

I worshiped the wondrous cosmos but shunned all forms of religious orthodoxy

I struggled to express myself as intensely as the marlin, the tuna and the dolphin

I was taught to think and to question only to be forced to accept and to play along

Know that I believed in comfort and efficiency always proceeding hand in hand

I am ashamed of our unending commitment to hate and death through war

I am embarrassed by our thoughtless, foolish trampling of this sustaining earth

I believe that we are far too many now, to be so reckless, wasteful and error-prone

Know that I do not strive to attain so-called heaven and have no fear of any hell

I believe my thoughts and actions will gradually dissolve within the great entropy, over time

I fear the permanent loss of my mind more than being dead forever

Don't Die In Spring

Don’t let go of me until sometime in that darkened end of November

There’s far too much light out here for me in March even if it is still snowing

Let them take you away when the sun is pallid and the days grow ever shorter

Don’t even try to push me aside when the wet snows nurture our new grass

I’ll gladly go when the ground is all brown and frozen and everything else is dead

Who could take off when the crocuses are just starting to peek out?

I’ll be ready to leave just as the lakes are freezing gray in that flat December light

I want you to be there listening when the redwing blackbirds return to fill the brush

Don’t die in the Spring when your sap is just rising after a long winter’s stillness

Wait until autumn shuts everything down into a depressed and muffled dimness

Stay with me as the streams throw off their ice and the aspen buds grow fat

Slip away quietly beneath heavy covers during some long, cold winter’s night

You cant leave just when the grebes, geese, ducks and mergansers are returning

Say goodbye when your garden is skeletal and the icy fog settles in before the snows

Why survive the long winter just to wither when at last the good light returns?

Don’t let go until the cold and dark infinitely lengthen both of our fleeing shadows

You simply can’t turn away from the fully-refreshed beauty of early May

We’ll lay you down during one of those savage early winter blizzards

We won’t let you go when the bass are bedding out on the pond

Wait for that dark and somber time before you decide upon your last move

Don’t leave me to futilely struggle against the rising tide of spring, in sadness over you

Let me walk dark streets alone during the time when grief and depression come naturally

Don’t die in the spring when the garden is calling out for your touch

I would rather think of you still hard at work, helping to push up our new bulbs