NUMB? NO. OLD? YES.

HAVE AT IT

I don’t get overly concerned about much.

There is no point in sweating such,

not my pleasures, pain, contentment, nor grief.

I have constructed a life by touch,

adapting towards the current problems relief.

No one ever asked me

what I wanted to be

if I ever, by chance, grew up.

Never set a course on the sea,

simply got on the boat and put the sail up.

I know there were eras where I circled round,

lost for a while, needing to lay my anchor down.

Had to stop for a bit to catch my breath and chart the sun.

Soon enough the breeze rose, slowly I began to move on.
Here I stand now knowing soon enough my day will be done.

What sense is there in fear or great joy?

I passed well beyond those charted bouys.

Now a man old enough to see that I had released

my youth through being both troubled and poised.
I have come to that distant horizon a vagrant at peace.

Except of course for the anger that keeps my heart beating.

Most mankind it seems spends life not thinking, yet ever eating

everything in sight. Goodness, kindness, air, forests, body, and soul,

wonton consumption of everything that could be swiped by cheating.

I don’t get overly concerned about much, your life is yours to control.

© M Durfee

6/21/16

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE LIKE HEMINGWAY OR PERHAPS SANDBURG

ADVICE ON WRITING

I have none.

© M Durfee

4/28/16

FEW ROADS LEFT, RIGHT, OR FORWARD

AN OLD MAN’S GOLD

The power to remember came from his pain, the ability to do more than simply last, came with every aching complaint his decaying body cried out, longing for the muscular pain of his past that even now, older, aging fast he thought in his memory fueled mind he longed yet once more to overwhelm today's age and time acquired aches and spasms one more time to make the earth open chasms and tremble at his footsteps softly taken on forest floors as the he that was I, in days now well gone by, walking to places where earth meets sky..

Treading among the shadowy canyons as well as the day lit greens and browns of deserts and dales where other life lived in union with but the slightest of sounds. The luxury of his human smells of effort and sweat mixed with that of running mountain brooks as he learned to take no more than his needs, leaving nothing of his passing behind for in littering the land, he learned, equaled littering the mind.

There are few better days resting on the rim of his hearts soul than those he spent breathing free air and a bit of road dust. Those places where there was no such word as must, or need, no emotion such as hate or greed. God and he talked and walked and talked more even when the walking stopped for the storm or star filled night, there was much to catch up on, much more to learn to see what truth and lies could be discerned in solitude.

Today his pain ages with every passing day and the best of his eyesight was left behind long ago, but his mind is clear, so is his soul and the shoulders where the straps of his home rested are not bent from the weight of the glaring green glow of his1600 cc home now idle but full of memory still even though it went by the wayside, never to be shouldered again, so many decades ago.

The power to live through the pain of today comes from the strength of the love he learned mixed with no fear of the untried, the unknown leading to answers grown long ago. Today’s still truth was born on the miles of memories made yesterday, walking back unbent down the road named Destination Unknown. He is sliding down the back slope now towards his inevitable end with no lament, knowing that his body’s pains will never end. Yet in his memory he holds knowledge spent to make the pain his friend. Oh yes it be so true that the memory of youth advantaged well his memories are not his living hell but they are truly to a man who's grown ungracefully old they are his finest purest gold.

© M Durfee

5.31.2015