For it too will end

Can there be so much in life
that bounds about as a playful puppy,
unknowing of consequences, tongue licks?
There was a time when forever
seemed so distant that time could not,
would not approach its threshold.
But, forever is not, it is approached.
It passes so quickly that, what was
so far down life’s road, becomes the
knowable present, and the past.
So much that could have been said,
was so much tossed in the ditch of life.
Father, why did you not listen?
I the fruit of your loins only
wanted to be heard, to find truth
in myself, the unknown of tomorrow.
You were unwilling, uncomprehending,
unassailable in your world of complacency.
What one word of recognition, of encouragement
would have been the spark to ignite
this unrealized tinder with in?
The silo I burned was not out of vengence.
Poised as a rocket to pierce the heavens,
I chose to see if a silo could fly,
chose to see if trailing sparks
it could reach far beyond my dreams.
It collapsed into cinders, glowing
embers to which no one would confess.
That act of joyous elation cleansed what
I did not want to share with the world.
What was lost father? Was it the crime
of being a child seeking the moon’s attention?
The night has closed around two lives
unfulfilled, ungratified, blameless.
Passing to go unnoticed as dying grass
at the edge of winter , lost to the dust
from which we are and to which you returned.
So goes life whispering a plaintive ‘why’.
The sum of a newborns first gasp of air,
the silo’s imprint no longer visable, unanswered.
We are as grass that grows eternal in spring,
each a single blade among the many, silos
consumed beneath the moon by winters chill.

Copyright: 2010, Donald Harbour