My Choice Draught

I’m inebriated on life

And all it has to offer

I keep taking big gulps

—Coughing, spluttering, spilling—

Rather than sips and swallows.

There is so much music

Sights, smells, things to try

Tastes to taste

Feelings to feel

Thoughts to think

There are so many books,

Sports, jobs, games, skills, responsibilities

And the people!

The people!

There are so many of them

So many of us

So many stories,

Tales of families, sorrows, joys

Of evil, good and all that’s between,

Friends, acquaintances, lovers, and all who could be...

Why is it that so few will touch my life?

So few... and so many...

I am drunk on presence

And thirsting for presence

I vacillate between extreme loneliness

And a desire for solitude

But the people

I wouldn’t give them up

I wouldn’t go sober

For while they kill me, enrage me,

Love me, challenge me, seduce me,

Question me, inform me, teach me,

Learn from me, touch me, strike me,

Enable me, analyze me, judge me,

Forgive me, kiss me, speak to me,

Destroy me and rebuild me

I know that I would not be me

Without you.

Let us get drunk on our presence

On our very being, and that being

Together.

In the Presence of Greatness

IV. The Diving Post

Lone and jutting from the wave brushed sea

I waited long for him to climb up me.

Once a summer he’d make a single trip

To my lonely beach to take a dip.

He would swim a hundred feet from shore

To take a single dive and not one more.

III. The Pier Column

Barnacled, I raised my load so light

In my row I stood so true and right

And once a month she’d be coming down

To the coast by this fast dying town.

She’d walk the planks past me down to the end

And watch the sea pass by just like a friend.

II. The Evergreen

A blaze of green I stood so proud and tall

Until that day when my turn came to fall.

A man came with an eye patch and a brace

And looked at me with sun upon his face.

He felled me there, in land becoming stark

And took off his glove to touch my gnarled bark.

I. The Sapling

Awake with waiting till my time would come

To be between his finger and his thumb

And from his bag of forest he grabbed me

To place me in the soil to form a tree.

Upon a stump nearby, he sat to eat

And shed some silent tears into his meat.

V. The Carving

Now I stand upon a shelf austere

With memories in moments through the years.

She found me there along the beach one day

A chunk of driftwood, weathered, dried and grey.  

She carved and whittled something out of me,

Something always waiting for her to see.