In those long and pasty days,

wrung out with the common befuddlements of

our race, there can seem to be no

end to the tributaries,

soggy back roads,

sullen detours, the personal politics

of working in a chain gang fog.

 

The sun, warming and full, is the same to

saint and sinner, soldier and sailor.

But doubly-parsed is its heat, meted out to all,

recklessly packaged for warmth, whim or want –

hope to one, threat to another, necessity to all.

 

Yet in between the particles of dreams lie

the pocked and random picture of our days.

To hoist and heft, backs bent and necks strained,

seems lighter when singing – or laughing because

the joke is good.

 

To laugh means more when everyone hears

the same words but the punchlines are different.

And only the skilled purveyor of the phrase, delicately

turned and timed with skill, can help the cautious and

skeptical, proud and aloof, naïve and wide-eyed alike

to get in on something good.

 

The better the tale, the shorter the toil.

So we dig deep to find the best tales straining

to sort and sift and make sense of 

the broken, unpatterned pieces

strewn about the edges of things.

 

So, with subtle indirection, the toolbox of yearning

wed to oratory, wed to a cloud of unknowing,

expecting nothing more than a tale well told,

comes the bard and we are given –

 

a road for our story.

_____________

Dedicated with great respect, gratitude, and love to pastor and friend and retired bard, Duncan A. MacLeod