Mysterious Encounters

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At year end, the mystery returns
That sense of timeless beauty
Memories of things we’ve longed to know
Inexplicable things, hovering about
Like smoke from a burned out candle

It comes in the earliest morning hours
At times, starting in a dream
Lingering in our eyes
And other untouchable places
Not destinations, but places tugging at our hearts

The candle’s flame lasts only so long
Soon it turns itself over to the darkness
Leaving us to wonder about the mysteries
Born into us from the beginning
Dying at each year’s end

Winter Paints December on Lake Erie

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If you look closely, you will see
The masterpiece Winter painted
Along mighty Erie’s shore
In the darkness, well into the early morning light

You will see his fondness for ever so subtle shades of gray
How one by one he bends, sheaths the tall ornamental grass
In rounded silvery whiteness
And how he paints ripply footprints at the water’s edge

If you look closely, you will see
The fluttering gulls in the distance
Seemingly small, yet not insignificant
Every detail a pixel of life

There’s more, if you look closer
If you’re willing to brazen the biting wind
Like the pile of jagged sticks, and mossy green rocks from summer
Now a single creamy white ice sculpture

And if you hold your eyes and heart wide open
You can read the painter’s signature
Written in the battleship gray sky—
December

First Confession

Confessions Among Strangers

Sometimes I question myself–
Whether I can ever live up
To your expectations of me–
That unfulfilled part of you
Which you foist on me

Sometimes I’d rather be a stranger
To you, everyone, even myself
Then I could stop being the chameleon–
The pretender that pretends to be
Whatever you or I think I should be

I hated my parents for the longest time
Because they wouldn’t let me be who I wanted to be
Then I stopped hating them
When I realized my ideas for myself
Were even worse than those they had for me

My vision grows more blurred each day by all the notions–
Lame ideas about who I am, what I should be
That’s a good thing–
Sometimes we spend too much time looking for ourselves
When all we need is to just be