Mumbled the old man

We will never,
in our entire lives
forward lived
be listened to
like when we are
babies
and have nothing to say
that makes any sense
or adds up to experience
as in process
other than
the audible reaction
we have come
to refine.

And still, the old go unnoticed,
after all they have witnessed
in further thought
one should not ignore
repetition
because it looks the same
and never is
and sounds like complaint
but never was.

We predict
the firefighter from the fawn,
timid in the forest at first,
naturally, he will adapt.
We guess and check
and still seem not to heed
the final words
as they were said
carelessly,
as if it were possible
like alternate endings.


Artwork by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1513, Old Man with Water studies in Public Domain. 

Corners @ 90°

None believed her but she still tried to tell

She did not do it for being right or to 

skew hindsight with foresight.

She was just learning

to look at it with new eyes too.

By liberally applying divine 

Rules of architecture to structures

We discover limits 

Hover in the rafters

Broken beams, pride paid the bills,

Support came in pillars, mortared with guilt

No doors were hinged on labors of love-

but all things settle down, inevitably.

It was working, building

And making 

New sense

Of our life in boxes and wreck-tangles.




Painting by Antonio Pérez de Aguilar – Painter, c. 1769 in the Museo Nacional de Arte [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.