What I someday might've said in the future

"Gather sunshine,
and let the ills of the world spoil with the first frost of confusion,
this is the harvest of the wisdom of old age."

Increasingly in the day to day of things I find myself looking upon something that reminds me of a face, or a thing I find familiar from places I cannot go. My heart leaps, just as quickly my thoughts betray me like a soft whisper--

"Once upon a time."

And just like that it's once again at my fingers- if the past could be something tangible- and the embraces of those that once loved me envelop me in the indelible hold of something that once was.

I posit vehemently here that we are never really alone if we were ever truly loved.

And still these bursts - these disquieting storms of emotion, and creation - come to me. Like the steam hisses hot, the twitches remind me:

That I am alive, and not forever of this mortal coil.

Not a thing at all here is given--

And yet at the same time anything at all is possible.

Looking up at these celestial stones from my birth stars I wonder about all those people and worlds that have been and pondered and gone on before me.

Can you hear me?

Did you ask these same questions?

Did they assuage your doubt?

Were you not unlike me?

I wonder about who they loved, and what they believed of the infinite possibility of the reach of man. I hope they can hear me, I hope they still care to listen. I’ll be content with my own answers if none are forthcoming.

Still, who missed them? Who loved them? I hope they knew they were loved whenever something bad happened, I hope this gave them comfort when they came to understand they were no longer to be promised their tomorrows.

Was love in their eyes when they saw the void was to be theirs?

My heart leaps across whatever divide separates me from them-even if only in my festering mind- even as I can promise them nothing, for I am no god. But I wish to mix my grief with theirs, and be drawn up by the laughter I hope is plentiful there. They must know that I share their holy curiosity. I want to share with them anything and everything they feel they might have missed. And I want to swear that it’s just as beautiful as ever here, and they’re all missed.

I will lead them out some day, if I could.

I wonder about them as I wonder about me. What this all means--what am I missing here?
What about that girl across the crowds I wrote a million love poems about the instant I saw her? Will she know I would’ve loved her once I cross through the shade?

Will she find my words cast down once here?

Will she know they were left to her alone?

Is there a heaven for the years we never spent together? A wellspring of life for the love songs that went unsung? -- They do not need to be mine, I wish to share them with some intrepid young lad that could by chance stumble upon them where they then will lay, distant and hazy, and unused and forgotten, though redeemed finally in the moment of that chance moment of discovery when he is sore and lacking for a yarn to spin that instant he first sees her.

My gift to the world- if it could be so- a wink and a nod to the creator, as if to say:

"I had the best of intentions most always,
and a kind thought forever in my heart,
if not always a kind word on my tongue."

I’d be content to be remembered this way, and I am elated just now as a slippery silvery streak alights the sky, perhaps a knowing check next to something in that great big book I often ponder about recessed out there somewhere deep within the cosmos.

What about this place extracts so much out of us sometimes? Is it effort that is always most proportionate to the gain, or is it more so the risk? Perhaps these are questions best left to some young dreamer destined to come up after me. I shall leave them now for him.

"Good luck,
and yes we all loved,
and hated,
and lived,
just and nothing like you."