Theories of Goodness

Theories of Goodness

After years of research
I can safely guarantee
That people try to be good
Leaving youth for comfort

And revolution for family
I see it every generation
Sleepy and ready to bury
Into the warmth of
The path of least resistance

People care, to the degree
It influences them personally
We don’t have the energy
For God’s sake, to do much more

You have to pace yourself
To live one hundred and ten years
You’re so good at being you,
Did it take you a bit of practice?
To figure out whom you wanted to be

After years of research
They tell me we only know
How little we know
And how wonderful it is

To still want to do, know and create
More, so jump, jump like your
Life depended upon it
What are you waiting for

Go do some good, we do not stop
We have no theory of failure
Only this philosophy of growth.

As New Rivers school Old Oceans

As New Rivers school Old Oceans

I’m in the waiting room
Called life
Between one world
And the next
It’s empty here
And quiet right down

To my bones, they are light
My mind is water
My breath is an appointment
With time, my body
Is a fragrance of the forest
All around me

These walls are not life
The cities do not grow
The skies blink with airplanes
Those birds haven’t left
In what direction
Is the waiting room?

From here to there
From outside to inside?
Babies too shy to stop
Clinging to a breast
They haven’t yet studied
Faces, but that’s soon

I’m in the waiting room
Called life
I don’t plan to stay forever
I won’t be called upon
The metaphor of surprise
Is nearly old to me

I might have been embarrassed
If I wasn’t the only one here
We are symbols to ourselves
And non-existent to reality
I’m in the waiting room
Between something and nothing

A dual mirror or voice
The echo of sanity or madness
Catching a thread in the
Silence, to remember that
I can be separate from
The fabric of the universe

If required, when ego is necessary
Like for movement or work or mating
It doesn’t seem important
I’m in the waiting room
For a lifetime of
Observation, studious observation.

Something to be Learned

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Estella-472873000

Wonder where the hard years went

Up and down and lost like blood and sweat

The monumental dramas have all but disappeared

For maybe love and peace

Can win the day, yet again

I passed a bridge, calling maturity

I broke into a dive, of self-acceptance

It wasn’t a matter of effort

I think it’s a function of

Synaptic pruning, lost memories

All the grown-up people say

The wine from these grapes

Tastes sweeter now, like wonder

Taken at a distance, with some measure

Of quiet detachment, where failure

Dulled by grief disappears

And joy is the only thing that can

Possibly take its place

No longer with boots of the hunter on

The chalk of a thousand sunsets

Has left its mark in nodding understatement

Of all the dreams left like alder leaves

Posterity knows Autumns well enough

That by disks of splendour, all that something

Set in a lusty tune, rust of dormant boughs.