Late Summer Nebula

 I heard it in the night. The season sings its lullaby. It has been here for its allotted time, and now, it must make its journey into the past. Every day, the hills and mountains are painted with more color, leaving me to wonder, How did things get so out of control? How did I not accomplish most of what needed to get done? 

I always thought it would get better as I got older, but instead the ride gets more wild and brakes really seem to be a thing of the past. I see my challenges and those I care about. In futility, I know that I cannot solve even a few at times. I am tied to the table as I watch everything play out.

Panic season is on the threshold, and the time has come to make everything happen that should have happened this year. But it is more than this; it is so much bigger.

I am hanging on. Spinning so fast, I don't even know how I don't fly off into space. It is a rough ride, and I'm struggling to catch my breath. Relationships so trivial, and created for entertainment, become significant tsunamis of emotion, of meaning, of storms of symbiotic importance. Tearing hard at our hearts, we realized how fast and powerful it all was. What is, secretly, a matter of heist, this minute, right here and right now.

You were here, and then you were not. I live in moments in which I can literally see the torn wallpaper and the grain in the hardwood floors. I smell the air of the industrial age and all of our naivety. I see your picture, there are so few. I feel that day too. I did not know. Someone tried to tell me, and the mere thought of it coming to light gave me chills. I knew then, and pushed it down, because I knew it was the truest of everything.

The stealer is taking every moment, every day. How much can I leave on the trail to give you something that I wish I had? Without audible words, can you hear me? One moment, I am aware, but the next, distracted. It is a taunting and a misleading. I am up and down, like a yo-yo. 

The Captain said he thought of time as a companion who journeys with us. What a joke. That is just as valid as the other one telling us he feels young. "Yeah, that's how it starts, 'ooh, ahh', then there's the running and the screaming." Next thing you know, you give anything to get it all back, to say all that you wanted to say.

In a sublime dream, I wander around looking for clues. The morning comes, and the reality of the sun filters in with more questions than answers. I am relieved by the discovery of unpleasant fiction. It dissipates in the rising sunlight.

The floor tilts, and I slide this way and that as the tide rises and falls from the news coming in. We get to choose these days. Yesterday, we just had to watch. The helicopters, the smoke, the broken-hearted. I don't even know if they still live.

There was a blowtorch in the western nighttime sky that I could "see" across over 400 miles. It taught me about many things. A strong and powerful voice that began in 1926 was still formidable in 76 and yet swept away by 88. How long will we remember until it is just no longer important?

How long before I forget? How long before you also forget? In all of these seasonal, personally assigned anxieties, how many of them really matter? How do we know the difference?