Never the rising sun and the clear spring air will I see
He had been to the moon and back.
Seen the black with no light,
the shadow within shadow.
And knew real fear, and felt real peace.
So standing in that sunlight, that knife of truth
he longed for that passionless embrace that made
his once glad heart
mad.
And for silence, and companionship, and life pushed forward by the black
urged by the deep uncaring night.
Bare earth and small piles of dog shit.
And the ever present windblown trash of a back lot.
Right there, in the front yard along with
the rusty wheels of a long neglected
bicycle.
Just like the lawn, left alone, gone away.
And a ball, sun bleached, still red, but faded
lay there.
Crows wheel in the sky like hawks.
Their cries are like the songs of sparrows
to the newly free man
out on parole, out for his shot.
The fourth one in his life, the second one this year
But crows will peck out the eyes of a man standing still
and sparrows hop and hide from the cat in the back,
both hiding, not moving even its tail dead still
A memory of before, a thought of lost days,
of before the shift, before the change.
A song in the mind's eye, such a silly thought
a silly way to be
watching music but not hearing it,
listening to life but not living it,
living death while walking around in the mind.
And all of it with that enlightened eye!
That heightened sense
that is worse than the wrong map,
or a book beyond our years.
Worse for the wear that is caused and
saddened by the beauty that is far beyond reach.
Because awareness is not living and living is not life
The heart is a hunter,
the hunted.
The lame,
and the free.