Early autumn leaves were walking but still was I when he appeared
Sunked-in eyes, and strangesteel boots, brown flecks in the flax of his beard.
He looked at me steady, for a minute or less, eyes even and blue with fluoresce
then murmured of time, how flow it not in a line, and began to begin his digress:

‘Have ye no whisper for no other folk,
let the blister of your earthly yoke,
be the blessing that writes your song for youth.’

‘seek all you can from all you will
seek questions and seek you answers will
run light on the ground and deep in your kin
and when long are you dust, long your echo shall ring’

‘Life be short beauty, for fool, foe or scholar,
hark! how the clock crows its way to the morro’.
and beauty be hidden to the unswerving fastridden,
May your speed never stop you from stopping to listen’

‘to love, that no lord above could tell so well
as two whose chestybeats chime at one.’

‘ And to the preacher at school, hell’s belt on his rule:
“For all and sundry to the mire, or all and sundry fear the fire”.
I say “but the tears of the joy for a newborn girl or boy,
could cool all the coals in the great sunfire.”

‘small words just are these, for one life’s brief release
but small ripples shift all of the seas
no religions’ sought proof, just lived-have-I truths
for all else is all but the breeze.’

‘and one day as me you’ll look onto you now;
a man more-or-less: less furrow, more brow
and be lost to describe, what river time doth inscribe
on the timber of each low slung bough’

With that he sighed, his rant fair run tired, the rehearsals’ rehearsal expired.
puzzled he reeled, counting wheels beyond wheels unscripted, unsteady, unsure
when life again in burst surged, through his throat into words of a song from long after before:

Love her, my son
as the rain, and as the snow
and as the passing of the salty salty sun, my son.
Love her,
love her,
love,
her

And then strange as it seemed, he was lost to the trees, just two eyes hanging blue for a tic
And then on the tock, the leaves leaped and were stopped, falling as one to the brick.

Still still I for a sec, small thoughts to collect, with the gathering air in my breath
I tasted the earth, the clouds and the hope, to walk onwards in spite of my death.

~ r.g.p. 2009