I WOKE UP AND I WAS 40



There is a high cheek boned beauty who has been a part of my life for longer than I have ever known.

When I sailed I could feel her kiss my face on the breeze

Feel her in the ocean swells

See her in the sunsets

All of it bringing me to her, healing me.



I can hear the wishes and and fears and dreams of all those around me

Pressing in and surrounded by the noise of other peoples lives

To not live my own



Seeking the quiet and stillness

Away from the cacophony of my mind

Still-dark-quiet, hiding and haunted

Screaming silently, surrounded and alone

Dying to have love, but living to have none



A life stolen in a thousand little cold crimes

A thousand little acts of blind ignorance



Denial



Hiding-haunted-buried in the black snow

Walking/stumbling through the winter of my life



Numb- cold- dead



I don’t know when I went to sleep

3, 4, 5 ?

I woke up and I was 40.



Feeling for the first time

Knowing for the first time

Believing for the first time

In life

Life peeled back and raw

Lived close to the bone

With others



In my sleepless nights I heard her, voice soothing

In my childhood I felt her, hair smoothing

A God-given pillow for my spinning head

I searched for her in my toy box, dark and small

Seeking her in the woods and streams and rivers of my youth

I tried to take her from others, who did not have her to give

Always looking, in the pages of magazines and in the frames of movies

Never satisfied



When I woke up I was 40

And I was married to her.