timkelleher.org

What are you doing tomorrow?
This tailwind turning
the page of each done day
to the ribboned gift of the next

tomorrow may not come,
we know,
but do not know as they do
the old, the ill, those struck still,

whose pillows hold, not promise
but guarantee, what hope tucks them in
when, should morning come, it’s in
a slow slaughter of diminishment?

Once a field
stretching to infinity;
the future is now a gated lot
of memory, yet

while the sun at last descends,
loneliness recedes, as evening’s light
reveals beside the bed
a presence of silhouette –

Hope, not alone,
but ever one of three,
with palm to brow, imparts
sleep’s ecstasy

On a barque of dream
the child is taken then
by Faith’s sure hand,
across the fathomless sea,

and in an ageless land, is awakened
by Love’s hand
not to mourning, but the reality
of endless dawning.

-12/25/17