The smallest details turn our lives down wildly different paths
Butterfly wings, hurricane winds, everybody uses the cliche
Then completely forget that cliches are truths indelibly
Written into the collective conscious by centuries of experience
Emotional bursts pushing momentarily on winds no different
Than those the butterflies ride and no more substantial.
A young woman walks through a store door on a Spring afternoon
Expecting to see her boyfriend smile and perhaps offer a hug,
Instead he’s scowling and her arrival startles him
Rather than face some intemperate growl she backs off.
Her young man’s disagreeable demeanor worsens as her legs
Beat a measured retreat, the door’s bell rings on exit
He slams an open palm on the countertop hard, fast,
Enough to make some loose coins jangle and matchbooks jump.
Romantics say that for every person there’s one and only one
Perfectly matched soul and so I ask if you meet this person,
Start down some golden path and then one day scream
Over some trifle, so important in the moment yet so
Utterly meaningless, and blast that golden path apart
What happens to the joy of that possible future?
Perspective matters, massively, more than readily
Comes to mind in the moment when it matters most
When a surge of happiness or sadness or pity
Courses through your veins and sudden action demands,
Heats up a body’s temperature to force a choice
Dragging the future wherever it winds you up.
Life, I’ll say, is a book well-written with characters
Who surprise you at times, featuring no balance at all
Between good and bad, pleasure and pain, faith and fairness;
Simply put, an unending team of runners handing off a baton
From one to the next in a marathon relay where no pistol
Shot signifies that only a single final lap is left.
BillSaysThis 