The Parade Route

 

There will be no more internal birds like singing

clocks, not like the lovely ones I know and

still look forward to hearing, ringing like

little bells in the church y belfry of 

the newly sprouting mornings to come, not

unless the birds shall also go into

another natural awakening.

I hope they do, that's all I can think of,

because the cities of reports are just

conflicting at best. Sometimes I feel like

I'm talking to you through a small sunk hole

in the ground. My worried words are being

 

spun around a gritty history of

tangled roots and scattered stones, dissolving

bones and who knows what else. I don't know how

they will look arriving, but I wouldn't

not say them to you. That's what I want you

to know, to hang onto. They are the most

honest thing I've got to reach you with, an

outstretched human hand holding a cup of

jolly carefully chosen words. I want

that contact to happen. I want to let

you know that the thing you are feeling is

also in me trying desperately

 

to express a big universal love

and understanding. But if the birds get

left behind it seems like a real shame. I'd

like everything to go with us, skies, trees,

puffy clouds, sun, moon, each and every star,

all the crawling dirt, all the whispering

grass, all the stampede of animals. I

don't think they'd want us to leave the parade

route so completely without them. In a

strange way aren't they just another wildly

surprising arrangement of our own such

amazing atoms? Whales, tigers, otters,

 

frogs, wolves, coral, you know the list goes on

and on a lifetime. The frost. Oh. But. Then.

The cynics will get their last snickering

laughs in, they always do. Dirty little

cigarette butts will litter their own sad

bitter lists like bugs on the windshield. Let

them write down their own crumbling epitaphs.

This sliver of a dream letter is meant

for you only and it does not despair

and it does not hide and it does not weep

and it will not rest until it is with

you always. That is the path of this ghost.   

Bonus poems:

The Faces of My Friends by Darryl Price

 

Give me every hope like

A deep breath, like gleaming

 

Sun, like apple trees, a

Leg up on a ladder,

 

The dream of a river,

Like hearing Beatle songs,

 

Like the ever being

born sea washing its long

 

beautiful locks near a

tall bright lighthouse, like a

 

dance under a blanket

of shared stars, a freshly

 

baked loaf of bread, like a

hot chocolate, like the

 

Statue of Liberty,

Like roses on a cake.

Poem

We're here because we are lucky, we

Might have already been here and gone.