Passing Beauty

Passing Beauty.

In the end amidst sterile sheets,

sweat beaded foreheads

and I.V.'s not like those of

a morning glory's bloom

we continue to metamorphosis

When your last gasps of

precious air begin to fade,

to encroaching darkness,

all that was beautiful haunts you

. 
Your mothers loving face,

that first kiss from

the girl next door,

the taste of frozen custard,

the creme brulee

of life remembered

on your parched lips.

Warm sun and beaches,

all the passion you emptied

into frenzied flesh.

Love and laughter,

and that sweet innocence

in the eyes of your children,

All fading as the barely heard

" I love you's," from your family

gathered around you echo forever

as you cross the boundary

of beauty lost, into a most

astounding everafter.

Carry all of the love

you knew and shared

with you in the archives of your soul

A heavenly library to ponder

in paradise forevermore.

In The Launching Of Another Year.

I am hung up and strung up

on the birthday balloon

of my advancing age

my future slowly deflating

The skin of my passage

wrinkling as I sail on

towards the blues

of tomorrows.

I am floating towards

the obscuring clouds

of Alzheimer's oblivion.

Thankfully I will not

remember the journey.

Blown away by the fact

that I will never touch

the paradise of youth again,

I am becoming a helium filled

shrinking form of my former self

colored in pale flesh tones

slipping away.

Soon I'll be just a tiny speck

disappearing into the vast

universe of humanity lost.

Sadly there is not enough

birthday cake and ice cream to

weigh me down.

But even so I indulge

in a gluttonous celebration

of my yesterdays vanquished.

We celebrate birthdays with balloons

most appropiately because

we all start off tiny filled with

a huge gasp of air

and grow slowly into a

full sized, bright addition

to all the colors of humanity

Eventually God's breaths of life

that sustain us leak out slowly

and we falter and begin our

journey back to something tiny.

something no more then seven ounces

leaving the shriveled husk

of our wearied flesh behind.

But our soul needs no bindings

or strings to hold us here

and so we sail onward

to that great balloon

man in the sky

foir the grandest

re-birthday party of all.