The loneliness of change

Loneliness is something that I have grown accustomed to. Not apparent if by my own choices, but nonetheless alone. Somehow separated by decisions made. Made by me, made by someone else? I can't tell anymore. The end of all that I have loved and I have hated is close. I can feel the breath of change on my neck and I'm sorry to see it come. I have poured myself into this mold to cast my life differently from the crowd. But the view is not one that I can enjoy alone. There is no one to see the things I see, or hear the things I hear? This fear is certainly my demise. As the man waiting by the oceans edge for his ship to come in year after year, I too have been waiting. Is it by some wrong that I have commited and now reap the fruits of my labors? It's true. I've not been a saint in any definition of the word and have wronged more than a few in this life. But still is there not even another malefactor to share my misery? Here I am waiting. Waiting for my "fishie."

The man of the sea

A cold gray sky over a restless green sea brings the memory long forgotten. Forgotten? Na not forgotten but buried. Buried under years lived.

"A gift from th' gods these days o' mine."

The man whispers to himself with a furrowed brow. The damp cold wind dances across his wrinkled ruddy face and the sea. The sea dim in his ears now as he listens to a voice from days before. Before scars of the struggle to live had marked these rough hands and the light from the sun grew dim in his eyes.

"ye 're but a man Silas. A man with the twilight of ye
years on the horizon. Have ye forgotten the Ammaring? The
Ammaring that show'd ye the way?"

The familiar yet strange voice of the past inquires.

"Na, I h've not sir."

The old man answers the voice under his breath. Looking
up into the sky to see but a glimps of the white cloud. The
Ammaring.

"Na, I h've not, but I fear it has me sir. Ne'r a day has fall'n that it hasn't dark'ned me thoughts."

At that the old man sat on a drift log and waited for a sign. He stared at the sea looking for the shadow, a sign of the cloud. The Ammaring."

The old man waited an hour maybe and said to himself.

"Thy hours ar' few Silas. Has 'e forgott'n his promise to me now?
I pray thee Ammaring don't leave me to the sea and its cold
hands."

...the winds as the chaff...

There is a time in life to start over some would say. Even so others would object, and say that it is more noble to keep what you have been handed. That in the hands of fate your time is carried away on the winds as the chaff is from the wheat. Who knows just where our bones will rest? To dust I guess. Forgotten and below.

I remember one late summer night a long time ago it seems. When I still felt invincible and the world seemed to welcome me like a son it had long been waiting. It was about two maybe three AM. I was walking home after a night of mischief with my pals to sneak back in my bedroom window before my parents saw my empty bed. As I marched along a lone solider in the quiet warm california night I passed a man lying in the gutter. It was an unusually dark night, and as he was just outside the curtain of the streetlight I had made no attempt at stealth or passing him discreetly. He lifted his head and said to me

"Boy, shouldn't you be home asleep?"

In hindsight I should have erred a tad more to side of caution, but me being the somewhat rebellious and extremely ignorant teenager that I was I replied

"Why? You're not at home, asleep. Why should I be?"

To that he chuckled a jolly little chuckle under his breath.

"If I had a home to be asleep in do you think I'd be sawing logs here?"

He said rather ironically. "Sawing logs?" I thought. Missing the euphuism.

"Home. I can't remember where that is anymore."

He said lying his head down again into the gutter. I stood there in awkward silence a long moment and then continued on my way into the night.

I lay awake that night on my bed thinking where that man had been and how he'd ended up lying in a gutter "sawing logs." What adventures and perils had befell this man and how had they made him forget.

Is there a time in life to start over? Some would say that. Even so others would object, and say that it is more noble to keep what you have been handed. That in the hands of fate your time is carried away on the winds as the chaff is from the wheat.