Bags for life

 

Greying hair, he sighs,

another bag under the eyes.

That’s too many bags for life.

A straitjacket of fear holds

his thoughts firmly in place.

He can't even put his faith in fate,

since fate has dealt hands

that always seem to land too late.

 

Old man time etched into

the cliffsides of his face, another wrinkle,

dimple creased, where his frown has sat,

the upside-down smile

where life has intersected with

too many crossed pathways.

 

A voice. Underneath the chorus

of disapproval, a singsong croon,

from the halo crowned moon.

 

"Age, you say, ha, you are merely a baby.

Barely a speck of a cosmic day. Look to me,

I've been here since before humanity

climbed from the tides, but I’m beautiful,

and the light reflects from me"

 

The man,

through tear stream rivers,

whispers back

 

"But you are just rock, frozen and stark.

Yes, a light giver in the dark, but you can

never understand the human hear.

How it yearns for so much, yet earns so little,

How it burns so hot, yet its bones are brittle.

The scars I bear, maps to nowhere."

 

Sweetly the luna symphony sings,

as the stars swing, blinking in the background.

 

"Do you not see my craters,

the pain I've endure, the impact from afar,

from so many rocks cast at my heart?

The years that have worn slivers

where sandy dust streams in rivers.

But I still pull the tides, I still ride the skies,

I don't hide my scars; I wear them with pride.

For my song wouldn’t be reaching you now

If I'd bowed to every knock down"

 

The man blinks back the tears,

looks again, in the bluish glow,

at the face he once knew,

and sees that the smile

is still hidden somewhere below

the frown, and those bags

contain so many stories within.

And for the first time in so long

his smile flips the right way around

and his heart grows.