Fill every page
with words.
Fill every moment
with life,
pain and experience,
love and its consequence,
until we go.
Let every step
through this world
be a movement
set to music.
A slow waltz,
a quick step,
a long withdrawal.
Eyes shine
as if beholding love
in the first and every
succeeding image.
Why not be
your most alive?
Curious mind,
what drives you higher?
What makes you take
the mountain tops
and then the sky?
Glowing with inspiration,
you set our world alight,
burning through the sky
on your way to the stars.
Mother,
father,
may I
ask you for a moment?
Can you take the time
away from your young children
to let me
ask this simple question?
“Will you teach them
how to live poetry?”
Faded by a mind’s insistence,
bitterness grows.
The eventualities
of sickness,
loss,
and utter devastation
wrack a body,
and heart,
and mind
with such anguish.
It is very easy to fall apart,
and some of us do,
so beautifully.
Perfect little disasters
that show us,
that is not the way.
The wide-open eyes
behold the breadth of life.
Far and wide,
a whole world of experience.
I want to fill
every space
with words,
with blood,
with life.
Until it sings
a beautiful song
of living poetry.
HG – 2021