Green Light.

I remember those bright blue lights
that shone across the bay
the way they would beam
ever five miles away
piercing the thick fog
that loomed amid today,
some god forsaken tomorrow,
and my old American Dream
that couldn’t have been.

I remember the soft eyes
of your two best friends
the comfort of their drooling smiles
and steady looks of disdain
that saved my tail
when shovel took to pail
filling it spade, by spade
with that sinking feeling
that I was fast running out of evenings
to stand at the end of my dock.

My fragile frame of doubt
poured out, offered in trust
at the clarity of those beams
sat gathering dust, and worry
as the rays across the bay
began to flicker, until they only
rippled in dull reflections
across a deep expanse
of tired waves, who folded
into the shore
as a pair of heavy shoulders
after a damn long day.

I remember the grooves of the table,
how the bowls would teeter
on swollen knots,
and that strangling feeling of
wondering who had invited me
to this holy feast
which welcomed with open arms
but held me at limbs length
as I, bruised by the wind,
stood alone at the end of my dock
waiting to feel love’s reach around me,
and stand on solid ground.

God was never buying me a drink
but his hands would be the ones
to salvage brittle clay
from the rubble of disappointment,
and in tender moments
remodel, remake,
and reaffix my gaze;
as I will be no victim.
To memory
to my own story,
or to its characters who come, and go
like the fading embers
of a once bright light
across the bay.

I will beat on.

Heart against the current,
borne ceaselessly
into new dreams
where the future’s untold joy
eclipses ancient ache
and the bright,
rising dawn before me
sears my eyes with beauty
and drenches my soul
with laughter.