On Becoming

She dances along the border
between turbulence and order,
The light wind catching the
gossamer-like sleeves of her ashen dress
Altering the unstable
yet delicate balance of chaos.
With the constraints of time embossed
upon her weathered face,
She stands quiet and hopeful
that her dreams will echo in her soul.

She enjoys this peacefulness before dawn
where past and present meld,
Where she can rearrange her mind
and keep her aloneness sacred.
She remembers a time before gnarled fingers,
once beautiful,
Left marks of passion ingrained in skin,
and love sang in her heart.
At times cerebral, yet judicious,
she wonders where the years went.

Grass drenched with dew,
a pearly almost turquoise sheen,
Mimics her jewel-like tears
in a macabre dance of silence
As the bells of ruined cathedrals ring
soft into her vulnerability.
A patch of dry, cracked earth
dictates mysterious meanings
For the absence of her childhood,
the loss of her innocence.

Of all the things left to her now,
hope emerges ever faithful
As time promises to relinquish its proverbial sentence--
And most inadvertently points her
in the direction of what
Was once her own mother's place,
how she earned the sags and gray--
Upon which her history was written,
sans the final chapter.

Sweet hope, the essence of the soul
in all things expressed or still,
Passing all things material
for that which is and that which was,
Its omnipresence pervading her mind
with brighter days ahead
In which to write new chapters in her
life, new beginnings
Unto her, untouched by temerity
in the vastness of life.

August 26, 2007