I am listening to Van Morrison
on an old radio.
I am an Old Person.
I am remembering a Long Life;
a life that no longer exists.
I am entering this moment called “Now”,
and I can take nothing with me.
Van Morrison fades, and the Radio is gone -
gone into something Younger,
a voice I hardly know.
A Younger Voice is singing about Love & Sweetness;
these Guitar Chords have been used before.
the Minor makes the Major all-the-more worthwhile.
It’s an Old Guitar and a Young Voice,
and the Afternoon aches for recognition
as Time slips by.
Van Morrison is gone, and I can’t recall his name.
Young Voices have taken over the radio
and I’m dissolving in a Purple Flame.
The Magic of Love is massaging my Heart,
and I just don’t know What To Do.
Perhaps I’ll just be quiet,
And let the Triumphant Armies of Love
Come Marching right on through.
The color of changing leaves
You work and prod and pull and full, you say ho! But then the sails for which your rails were meant to fill, now fall with no frill and you say, oh. Left chaste, debased, with cause to erase the chase and the case you held against your own wind of sin and sorrow sown, you blow and blare into the air in hopes that you might know. Now freed to peace in pieces and ceased you then begin to grow. What shapes and scapes that rapes the fate of places which we go? Too many names are there that blow the air and cheat its mighty row. I’ll keep attention in one direction and tell you when I know. Or keep an eye upon the sky until then when I go. Then say what’s fore, belief found core, and un-envelope once more.
For many years I wanted to buy a book for my mother — a book that would explain everything: what I hadn’t or couldn’t explain since I had been old enough to notice my mother wasn’t all that happy and, Lord knows, I wanted my mother to be happy and if not “happy” per se, then at least aware of what it was that made me, her son, happy — the “thing” that for so many years she thought was a phase I was going through and, even worse, some kind of heartless rejection of her and her way of life.