Time's Face on the Waters

I stand at the edge of the pond and watch the ripples sing their song to the summer sky. The clouds are more beautiful. The ducks that fly are more graceful. Trees mirror their arching boughs over the big puddle and seem to come alive. Then, I look into the pond and see my face as it glows—not like a fairy ring, but as a younger man, the man I knew thirty years ago. The more the pond stirs, the better the reflection is framed by the big sky, the trees and the ducks. It is better not to look at me when the pond turns icy and freezes. There is nothing then but the gray backdrop, leafless boughs and ducks flown south. This is truth's face when time is seen upon the waters.

Nature's Tools and Mine

I look over the land and see the hills in the mist, the river churning as it always has through the chasm and over the falls, and I know that nature's tools are not the same as mine. I have hands to fashion artifacts to feed me, clothe me and to protect my own. But lately I've been given over to buy, beg, steal or swap for food, for warmth and the safety of my kingdom. These hands do much but half of their design. But then I look at the river, always carving the valley making the hills grow. Then I know my hands are drifting away from their design and that nature's tools are not the same as mine.

Great Things

I have always been exposed to great things—great books, music, performances and the arts. They have unfolded about me like the leaves of the agave or the wings of the monarch. It is probably a just thing that I should lose the sight of one eye and scarcely feel the earth beneath my feet. Just in that I have inhaled the beauty of Austen, Tolkien, King and Dickens, beheld the fire called the Sistine, watched with awe the power of old Egyptian love sealed forever in an ancient tomb, and have slumbered on waves Mozartian. I have seen Gui-lin in the mist of her wet mornings, where the cinnamon trees burst over the plum pudding hills that vie with cabbage aromas. I have supped too long, indulged too many times for any human to dispute the parity of loss. Now, I pick up my armor, shielding the sun, deflecting its rays to my own response, my own mark indelible, for one cannot mourn the loss of such things as sight and touch, when one has recorded all things in the soul. It is time for me to thank the creator for what I have, and join with the great for others to imbibe. The days are getting short for me, and the best is yet to come.