Don’t Miss A Moment, Being Present Now

As a child you lived lost in play,

long summer days building castles

at the beach. The sun baked your back,

wet sand oozed through your little fingers

making turrets, towers and moats.

Your dreams were once inspired

by splattering rain.

Now you drift in penumbral mysteriums,

agonizing about what you could or should

have done, hung by a ceaseless thrum

in the grey and white of your brain.

Can you ever stop wanting, plotting

and planning? Only the machinations

of your mind separate you from heaven.

Numb to sensation, you plod along missing

the parade of luminous flux.

You must have amnesia for when you were

more alive. Once surrounded by a galaxy

of fireflies your soul tasted naked joy.

You no longer notice comely buns waggling

down the street and you pass without a glance

a Japanese Maple laced with ruddy leaves.

You can’t stop keeping score.

With self-abnegating judgments you clamber

for perfection. So what if your socks don’t match

and your tie is too narrow and your only suit,

pulled from the closet for weddings and funerals,

smells of moth balls.

You don’t have to make the Forbes’ list, win

a Pulitzer or Nobel prize. You’re born to be here

and gone like everybody else soon enough.

Your face will be rouged, cold, hands folded over

your chest, lulled by a silent gong into the infinite

stillness of dreamless sleep.