some people are bread for the journey
others are stones in your shoes.
we remember the pain
but the joys grow hazy.
beloved faces blur in memory
as grief draws salt from the life-blood,
making it hard to think, to move,
to do the one thing needful now,
and the next, and the next.
how do we bear it?
the joy, the grief.
the way life stretches ahead,
stretches us thin,
then compresses suddenly
into a few remaining years,
less sand in the top of the hourglass
than in the bottom.
break it, clench the sand
as tightly as you can---
it still runs out.
what was it about our lives
that made so many of our children
choose not to become parents themselves?
was it a fault in our navigation,
the abandoned cities of dreams
we overflew on our way,
or the irony of effort spent
as we refused to make them latch-key kids like us,
or the lacklustre world handed down?
the owl sits in the wood's edge and hoots,
"who cooks for you?"
and i laugh, because i cook for me,
i fed the bread people
and the stone people
and the children and the cats
and myself.
still seeking sweetness
for this leaking boat of a body
for the coracle heart inside,
i raise a glass to the owl
and plan my dinner.
