Symphony

Symphony

I

Half my life is past

Without a memory

Planting carrots in a garden

Drawing pictures of houses

Making holes in the dirt and my knees

Swinging in swings and climbing on ladders

Singing simple melodies under an ice cream sky

Hour after hour watching the clock in classroom

Make one step backward before striking the time

Flying on my bike past the chain link fences

Until that moment when sun went down and I awakened naked

II

And then went so slowly towards the unrelenting goal

Reading steinbeck and stanlee, singing in anger

Notes chained by convention and sent to perdition empty handed

Half god and half ape unknowing my own divine name I sing alone

Here I claimed to stand for something without understanding or reason

Here I claimed right to be equal with my father whose only attempt to hold me made me rigid

Here I gave up weeping and looked towards the future, sure of my eventual wealth

Here I made my quest the ever present flower of sweet ambrosia guarded by young girls

Here I made my stand against all that pulled me toward the growing chasm of mediocrity

And then I fell

Fell into the growing gap between my expectations and the staggering force of inflation

III

Now, running into the street and taking the first turn into the crowd

Going around the blind corner facing up to my obligations in darkness, I whistled

Giving my time, giving my strenth, giving my blood, giving my sweat, I sang

Step by step by step without stopping, I danced into the main stream being pulled down

Down where all these thousands of years empty into the ocean of torment

Endless attempts to reach shore to pull back to go nowhere to stop moving

If only to stop just long enough to look around to see where this will end

Reaching out to grab onto just a piece of something that might slow the force

Only to take all that I hold onto with me down, going down, down into the deep water

IV

This is the understanding

Finally we have come to an agreement

I will continue to continue going down forever until I come

To the mouth, to the source of all waters, I will flow,

Flow with the raging waters, singing its praises, I will flow

Flow with the torrents around the rocks in swirls and eddys

Flow with the branches and leaves and refuse water has torn from shore

Flow going down around corners and flow under bridges, I will flow

Flow knowing only the direction of winter, I will flow

Flowing toward nightfall

And eventual rest

wilson/06