The Days Are Short

The Days Are Short

(“He turned the wilderness into pools of water and the desert into flowing springs.” Psalm 107:35)

I wanted to get a head start and send you
the pre-snow breath of autumn. The days are short
for bare feet and wine in the sun.
And though my own hours are divided in
half,
I would share them with you as if we had
a hundred years to spend
listening to streams and frogs playing on the banks.
I would walk the levees, even though my legs give
out so much quicker in this slant-lighted season.
I meet my limit far too soon,
or start far too late in the day. Please
don’t feel you must arrange your schedule around me.
But the sparrows were bathing in
a puddle earlier, the leaves hanging lightly to
their branches as they blush before winter.
I wonder if last year’s leaves are happy as loam,
if the rose petals feed next year’s blooms.

Though pain commands my hours, tells my
bones there are fewer miles I can travel in a day, the
dawn peeks in anyway.
Complaint is not a language that settles well on my tongue.

There is time to build a new earth, though my time fades.
There are reservoirs of mercy though the sun sets early.
The deer eat the remains of the apples in my yard,
the guns half a world away disturb the mountain’s flow.
There are babies fighting for breath, there are elders
forced underground.

The day is punctuated. The percussion becomes harsh.
The rivers flow but are dammed by territorial possession.

And we wait for rain that will wash us clean,
we hope the river will soon drown our sorrows
and
cleanse our inhuman intentions.

Come, let us walk together, holding hands across the
hostile borders.