From Time to Time

From Time to Time

From time to time, now and then,
I ponder places I have been
And all the folks who now reside
In memories, where flows a tide
Of supplication for the days
That danced entranced before the haze
Of heavy-hearted transformation
Canceled ways of celebration.

Innocence belongs to such,
A dancing, prancing, open trust
That, unaware of lurking snares,
Lives and laughs without a care
For what the morrow might entail
Or how in night and deep travail
Some ways are lost and not regained,
Some dreams are tossed from one-way trains.

Reality, inconstant friend,
Drawing lines that curve and bend
Around my eyes and creasing face
Tracing smiles and falls from grace
And forming now the channeled grooves
That funnel tears from former smooth
And cherub-looking cheeks of yore
Now snaked by rivers seeking shore.

These things I think, from time to time,
But then I blink and gone's the grime
Of fuzzy-headed introspecting,
Jaunts into my youth, reflecting
Sentimental searches, sure,
But wanderlust that's wandered far
From what the moment offers now
Far beyond nostalgic plows
Whose constant tilling of the past
In shadowed light the present casts.

The rivers running 'cross my face
Are crucial for the works of Grace,
Outlets needed for contrition
Seeking solace for convictions
Confident the test of time
Will show, in all, a greater rhyme
Where rivers end in pools of joy
Reflecting there the tears employed.