Scuttlebutt

There’s a thousand different ways

I could spin it, slant its effect

My version of what happened

But truth has a way of seeping out

Even in depictions we try to hide

From the world and ourselves

Only a fool would dare bother- now

 

It seemed a bit odd and yet

Fashionably accepting, for even us

Maybe even too accepting

To look forward to a bit later

Like hours later, each night

As being some quick triumph

And then again further onwards

As in like tomorrow morning

Being somehow the new summit

To aim for, to conquer if but only

In the space in our convoluted minds

As far as getting over- it all, again

While we steep- in muck

 

Maybe in some foolish respects

That kind of mess we lived

Replaced what we had- and lost

And thereby replaced reality

Any sense of normalcy or love

And getting from here to there

In love was all a bit more perfunctory

Like breathing, unnotably

In our most mundane of daily’s

 

Perhaps along our heart’s pathway

We lost what it meant to be us

What it meant to love one another

When we threw the compass overboard

And simply headed to new horizons

Braving those head on waves

Unconcerned of the weather or hunger

As our souls simply sought

To bestow something greater to another

Without concern of what we might gain

Lacking any fear of landing anywhere

Least of all- here, in this place- today

 

All I know now, was in that moment

When our ship of love went down

Was seeing your image swim away

Until you were merely a mirage fading

You- never looked back once

I’d bet my life you would, I would’ve lost

Oddly, I feel now as if I won

 

I clung on the mast, and our loves flag

As I choked on waves of bitter truth

My body, my mind slowly grew numb

Floating off in the tide’s changing currents

Almost as if I remained, in nights darkness

Never setting anywhere close to-a bit later

As if they were tiny islands of refuge

That we had become so accustomed to

Until the charity of a drier shoreline

Bequeathing granules of time, spilt over

Offered me a place far from the wreckage

Of that shattered little sailboat of- us

Where the illusion of love existed

Far more than reality of love…for one of us

 

Poet of the Light © 2019