Packing Luggage for a Lifetime

A box in my bicycle basket,

Was in route to my favorite tree…

To sway in the upper branches

Like a flag waving the secrets in me.

Later in the eighth grade,

Stashed addresses under the ashtrays,

In the Pontiac Station wagon,

Were my plans for future days.

My GTO in high school,

Hid my life under the spare tire.

Every party contact, dirty joke and picture

And future plans yet to conspire. 

I packed my dreams in a suitcase

For that trip to college on a plane.

Returning with three times the luggage;

Dreams matured, yet much the same.

Phone numbers on bar napkins,

Photos marked with hand drawn hearts;

Letters promising forever and a day,

Incinerated when the promise departs.

So many boxes of old memories,

Deciding what to toss away…

These paper copies of my memories

Are in my mind to stay.

I’ll be a hitchhiker my next journey,

Slipping away into the night…

All this baggage no longer needed,

I'm obliged to travel light.

Time requires far less luggage,

As you age and travel twice as far,

Past local highways through the universe

Onward to that distant star.

Was Pink Floyd in Seattle?

Pink Floyd raised the question,

“Is there anybody out there”?

Two days on Seattle roads,

I found no green pastures anywhere.

Stalled traffic, the suits and homeless,

Red lights and sirens everywhere!

Pedestrians flowing in gray currents,

Eying buses with a zombie stare.

My biggest fantasy last night,

Was escaping from it all…

Reminiscing alone, in the extinct dark

Safe behind a concrete wall. 

How sad it was to witness,

Another grand western city fall…

Birth control, rain forests and reason phoned,

But no one took the call.

The Majestic View

My window looks out on salt water,

For miles between the Olympics and Cascades.

Yet it’s this corner upstairs, where I witness,

All life’s beauty and when it fades.

I see a hundred years of history,

In saw marks powered by Penn Cove tides…

The loss of hero poets, cold weather,

Deaths of pets, loves time divides.

There’s a war brewing deep inside me…

Peruse past photos or the window’s view?

I’m prone to celebrate the past,

Hope screams, “Embrace the new”!

Mortality's nipping at my heels.

I’m walking a tightrope on life’s cusp,

In this corner of my upstairs’ room,

Looking for oil while starting to rust.