Picture life etched in stone
Life sketched in poems
On sidewalks in dry chalk next to homes
Picture all you’ve left alone
And kept in reflections shown
Your dome sketched in subjective tones
Picture life on a sidewalk
frame it - so all view
all you’ve ever felt
try to name it - its called you
picture it
in the space between steps
it’s the grace between breaths
and the message in this make-believe text
picture …
v-1
God exhaled
The moon shivered in a blue river
Stardust fell
Through space released and gave its peace
To a man in his place beneath
Graciously as he laid asleep
draped in sheets
with his honest wife
in the gold days of his old age
and on this nice August night
his soul raised
he saw this light - the calmest bright -
like Coldplay, it was all yellow
and in its gold rays, he saw his plight
as it showed him the youth that he’d forgot about
like how he block the spout on his house’s hose
and not let the water out
he thought it out and wondered
how he’d remembered it all?
how younger he’d enter the halls
when summer surrendered the fall
then he wondered was his life through?
In slumber under this bright moon?
Like skies after thunder, the light grew
And more from the limitless stash of images flashed
And poured from the reservoir to mimic his past
He saw himself with his wife growing old
his children’s lives
He filled with pride as the light showed his soul
Then it’s brilliance died …
v-2
And it was dead black in his eyes
A voice said that it was time
But he was steadfast in his mind
So he said back in reply
“Please! Seeing my life like this
It made me think
I could state succinctly everything life is
if you gave me ink
And I could maybe print every speech and thought
And release my plot on these streets I’ve walked
With a piece of chalk
To paint the sharpest image of a heart
Cuz as much as art can mimic
Nothing’s as real as a life told from start to finish”
Suddenly the man awoke with a violent cry
That strangely didn’t seem to disturb the silent sky
His wife was still beside him under the blankets enclosed
And when he looked up at the clock he saw the hands in it froze
So the man just arose, put his hands to the roads
And began to compose the most candid of prose…
v-3
So he wrote every quote spoken
And left every breath kept
Sketched in the next step of concrete
Then Death crept and lead him to his bed
As the sun began to rise
He titled his surprise
“The Story of the Man that Died”
Then his wife and the townsfolk awoke and were shocked
First by his passing, but then by what he wrote with his chalk
They got the roads blocked by a flock of postmen and cops
He wrote from his lot to the edge of town close to the docks
Where he used to watch the boats and often joked with his pops
His folks had not long ago passed and now both with him walk
People came from everywhere
They read the story through for days
It wasn’t nothing new or strange
Still they were moved and amazed
It wasn’t the places he’d been or the people he’d met
It was the spaces between and the secrets he’d kept
They wept joyfully, for the greatest story no one told
Was just the story of an ordinary man growing old
Picture life etched in stone
Life sketched in poems
On sidewalks in dry chalk next to homes
Picture all you’ve left alone
And kept in reflections shown
Your dome sketched in subjective tones
Picture life on a sidewalk
frame it - so all view
All you’ve ever felt
try to name it - its called you
picture it
in the space between steps
it’s the grace between breaths
and the message in this make-believe text
picture…
