Come Casual

Rolling up the interstate,

Cruise control on seventy-eight,

North to Lexington, K. Y.

Dark enough for headlights on

And light enough for ashen sky

To outline billboards zipping by,

The chevy gobbles highway strips,

Spits them out of straight rear pipes,

And the radio pounds out sixties’ gold.

I was drinking, I believe,

The very night I proposed

Marriage on a New Year’s Eve,

A long time ago.

Spontaneous words at the time

Issued from a muddled mind,

Yet some innate internal guide

Recognized that by my side

Sat an angel.

Was she sent to serve a sentence

And I put here to be her penance?

I suppose I’ll never know.

Time as best I can tell

Is motion perceived as change

Relative of another to me

However still as I might be.

But what if both remain the same?

Then decay assumes the name.

So change is not to be deprived

Nor time denied.

Damn, I missed my exit.

              rlkilgore

rlkilgore@chartertn.net

Sweetness of the morning, a breath of air
Drawn and hardly noticed, if at all,
By youthful haughtiness presuming its entitlement.
Of more concern, social events of the day -
Who’s going to be with whom and what to wear.

Tomorrow’s dawn brings just another day
When its beauty is made common by endless supply.
Mortality, when all vistas extend out of sight,
Is only a word, understood without true comprehension
From urgency induced by time’s forsaking way.

Passion of the loins grudgingly releases its grasp,
Not by choice, to passion of the heart and the mind
Where yearnings are compressed against the wall of finality.
Each minute, each second, relentlessly squeezed until,
Surely, most truly cherished are breaths drawn last.

                                        rlkilgore

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