Continuous Life Poems

The Continuous Life What of the neighborhood homes awash In a silver light, of children crouched in the bushes, Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender, Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty, Have run their course? Oh parents, confess To your little ones the night is a long way off And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them Your worship of household chores has barely begun; Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops; Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do, That one thing leads to another, which leads to another; Explain that you live between two great darks, the first With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur Of hours and days, months and years, and believe It has meaning, despite the occasional fear You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside, That your search goes on for something you lost--a name, A family album that fell from its own small matter Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours, You don't really know. Say that each of you tries To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear The careless breathing of earth and feel its available Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending Small tremors of love through your brief, Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.Strand, Mark is the author of 'Continuous Life Poems' with ISBN 9780679738442 and ISBN 0679738444.