All is Colored

All is Colored

(“Sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.” Ecclesiastes 2:21)

He is swimming in his loneliness,
drowning like ducks on the desert,
trying to space his words just far enough apart
to not run out before the breathing is done.

He started the tailspin, he began the helicline fall
with very little effort at all. Admitting so, he hoped
everyone connected also remembered his cry for help
before the spiral began.

The hair he let grow longer than before now
lay in a kiss-curl on his forehead
easily mistaken for a misplaced tear.

He is drowning in his loneliness,
swimming on the backdraft of yesterday’s success;
goals set and exceeded, awards granted unexpected,
applause and overflow, ovations and the high plateau
of questions about how to do it all over again.

Like a magician who whose props are burned to ash,
he tries to recreate the love and fire that took him
two steps a time up stairs and down. He limps
behind the smell of summer’s rain, never needing
to look behind…
except for those who have lapped his pace
and may pass him again in gray drizzle.

He is swimming in dreams unmet,
visions laid down flat on the concrete of cold memory;

All is colored by pain, the music is interruption,
sunrise a shame to miss, and tear-wells full
and ready to flow

At the least hint of another joy evaporating with time.