jaybeasley2

everyday

repentant and disgusting

you give up hope

in a way that’s so

rewardingly profound

I wasn’t the schedule

that you found

it was competent the way

our family trees assembled

yours was the famous

old joke that no made up

scorned bar second place

could show up

some wayward orphan flew

into the lives after a mother and son

but the tales followed as did the sun

a dawn that let to painful reunions

when this night bit down

we read out our cards

let the chips fall and

chewed our

revealing indescribable

petty meaningful friend-losing unremember-able  

and twitchy bottom lip

and ended it

as the little old men

gather and share coffee

and stories of the times they

know will make each other laugh

one single solitary leaf

comes from above

to land on the blank  page

I have spent the past few hours contemplating

and as it sits

vein side up

I am stirred from my silver lining

to this exact moment

right now in this very minute

all I have tried and been

all I have done and seen

comes rushing back in full detail

and I can either change course and get

what I want out of life

by striving, straining, doing

or join the rest of the world in

being a worker for someone else’s cause

all this time

I have been

building a cocoon

for someone else’s caterpillar…