The Old Have Spoken While We Are Speaking

    (an uncentered arrangement)

A familiar place balanced with remote subtlety

recognized while the last sundrops thinly slide

off the final sighs of the oak leaves, ageless myths

carried from unsettled shores to wood top tables,

such as here where you may sit just as they did,

where murmurs and fingers work form together

and topics don't matter as much as one flow

going endlessly through another and inflection

slowly comes from the well worn shoe sole

still damp with weathered morning, suffused

yesterday always following tomorrow. At least

that is what is hoped to be learned. Meanwhile,

there are those efforts of  what we say to ourselves,

how at some points sitting along alone not too far

from either side of history's edge. And at other times,

in the center of our lives, where there's collapse

of the day's efforts which can't ever be anything

beyond what they've failed to be. Which is a sorrow

through which life carries on. And if you need a hand

that is held by the self that guides, one direction

is out to the stars beyond which we do not move

or individually revolve around and how they widen

us beyond that-- standing lucid in quiet, mirroring silver,

with a murky wavering warm blooded attentiveness.