I stand tonight and look over the tossing sea. I wish I had more reason to feel as melancholy as I do. Alas my heart speaks to me in a language that I once knew but now can only speak in broken rhyme. I could attempt to analyse myself as a specimen, like a butterfly you see pinned to the page. But no, I’m more complex than that, surely? Or perhaps I am that simple and my eyes are simply blinded with the film that washes over them of sudden now as I recall my once grand dreams. I shiver and pull my jacket closer to myself as the first few drops of rain begin to fall. What is it that I wish for now? I hesitate to speak aloud what has been swirling in my heart. Instead, I breathe deep. I close my eyes and as I hear the ever changing symphony of the sea I run my thoughts over the promises that I cling to. Oh thank God that I do not put my hope in mine own fickle heart! If my own emotions were the basis of the confidence in which I wake and stride forth each morn, I would be a sad thing. I breathe deep again. It is good that my roots go deeper than the mountains that lie at the heart of the sea over which I look. Now out loud I do speak a few words, a litany, a pleading, a prayer to the God who sees. Look at the stars that peek through the clouds! Look at the moon light that plays over the singing sea! No less does my heart churn yet somehow now at a slower pace as I consider all that hath been wrought for me.

’tis a delight to sit and dwell and wonder on all the wondrous things that have gone before. Sometimes it is easy to fill one’s time with little errands here and there and hither and yon. Yet sometimes I find it better to take a breath and breathe in deep and dwell on what lies before me before it’s of sudden gone. I talk in rhyme when I cannot bear to give into mundanity and let all my thoughts run in prose. Yet can there not be beauty in plain speaking and in a turn of phrase that may not have a counterpoint but simply shyly stands alone? I think so. But sometimes I’m afraid of plain speaking or perhaps it’s just that I’m worried that my thoughts are vapid and reflecting on my lack of inner fire. I know it’s not true yet still my dreams groan. Perhaps I feel if one peels back the layers of my metaphors and the billowing tulle of all my words they’ll find a shocking lack of insight and that I just prattle on and on to fake my worth. Maybe it’s silly that even now I can be so self-protective and even paranoid in my lines. Or maybe not? Maybe I just fear that one will look down their nose at me and sneer and say look at this pretense and pomposity – it’s nothing more than wind and lies. Yet still I write and yet still my thoughts tumble over themselves like so many eager puppies at the county fair. Perhaps out of my desire to create nothing great will ever emerge. That would be tragic, one would think. Yet maybe not. For in this desire I have to create beauty in an ordered chaos of rhythm and word, does that not point to something greater than my heart can truly comprehend? I hope that still with my feeble offerings I may kneel and serve. I wonder. Is it silly that I’ve written so long now without actually saying much of note? I will allow it, this once. Just ignore all the times I’ve done it before. I feel that if I’m harsh and overly critical enough of myself, you all will have sympathy on me and with a hand on my shoulder say there, there. He’s been hard enough on himself, poor fellow, and he sees that he has naught of worth. No need to pile on. He is only a brute consciousness after all.

But a glimmer in my eye testifies otherwise. I lay planks of rotted wood across the stream aplenty, I know. Might I lay one or two noble branches, artless in their dress. Maybe an indrawn breath will testify I’ve succeeded. For me, fool that I am, I’m impressed. The fire burns within, low and true. I walk across this brook and breathe deep of fall’s sweet melodies. See how the early evening light falls upon the path now. I forget all else but the strong sweet song that fills this meadow. And I press on to that which lies before.