Spring by chance
I was born in spring,
Hope is my friend eternal, yet
Every footstep I hear tomorrow –
Trample on the dying today, like
Refrains from another mourning.
It’s been a while since I wrote last.
Wish it was the ‘block’ , isn’t –
Just spent the words worrying –
If history repeats, may be
Future is nothing but the past.
I’ve seen each end of time at once,
Fleeting towards the now, where hope
And fear; intersect to bring a whiff –
Of joy, residues of melancholy, whatever
Holds in a moment chosen by chance.
Al Raines
I’ll stand up to the waters
I saw it riding
On the waves –
The future is coming
I felt
Sweeping people in its wake –
I heard someone protest
I turned to see, who
It was –
My conscience.
It spoke without a tremor
Glancing at the gush –
I cannot sacrifice
This our now
In the name of a
Blind onward rush –
A tomorrow we cannot judge
To be the best,
Is not worth our while
I thought
And holding still, with a smile
I said
I won’t let
Go down –
What is our now,
For a growth
nobody’s own –
I’ll stand upto the waters.
Al Raines
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice–
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
“Mend my life!” each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do the only thing you could do–
determined to save the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
