And When We Wake Up

A poem about decisions when it's too late in life to do anything about them...

And when we wake up
And these lives are distant seascapes
Where dim lights dance in the haze
And the miles are countless
And the years like faded yellow pages torn
When love is an unaltered notion
A final definition
Or maybe still an illusion

And when there is only dust
And a face in the dust
And the name of that face is lost to the trade winds of time
But those hollow eyes still haunt you
The ghosts of a thousand choices
And you chose to leave her behind
And her face is there
Always there
But you can no longer remember her name

And there in the shadows the Vagrant waits
His clothes sin-black and playing a sad fiddle
And he has come to retrieve you
And he has come to wake you up
When your hands don’t work so well anymore
When your fingers have failed at the pistol
He comes with bony fingers
To touch your sleeping face
To whisper her name into the vacant halls of your heart

And when we wake up
And there is nothing so precious anymore
And that great tomb is filled to the brim
But we have not seen each other in years
And we cannot see over the pile

Will we smile
Or will the sadness break like water in the rocks?

11.2010