For My Brothers.

 

There are days in your life when you need to be still,

No need for excitement you don’t need that thrill,

When the quiet is everything, silence and calm,

No want for disruption, no want for alarm.

 

There are days in your life when that need is profound,

When your feet are both seeking the sanctified ground,

Where lips full and rounded are mouthing a prayer,

And life’s greater burden has burdened your care.

 

Can we turn toward heaven and reach out to what,

Or brace from our heart in the strength that we’ve got,

Place trust in companions though fickle and frail,

Prepared for the moment they stumble and fail.

 

Stand firm like the rock at the edge of the sea,

Impervious, immoveable, motionless, free,

Such brave isolation is freedom from pain,

But the song of its waves is a bitter refrain.

 

Whatever you do sends the broad ripples out,

The stone to the water, the brave to the rout,

You drive from the faithful the faith that they had,

Replacing their hope with the sanguine and sad.

 

And yet we have choices, free will in the soul,

The right to strike down and the right to make whole,

The right to build castles of whimsy and dreams,

Where nothing but fantasy seems what it seems.

 

When you spin with a word or you weave with a thought,

You are spending your life with no care for what’s bought,

Where you’re gathering dust on the shelves of your years,

And you’re washing your hope in some river of tears.

 

When you reach for the stillness, it flies beyond reach,

As the broad ripples break at the edge of your beach,

Life slips through your fingers like fine desert sand,

And god still denies you your own promised land.

 

Should you reach for the bottle the whisky the wine,

Committing your thoughts to the stanza and line,

Hide nothing from anyone, baring each bone,

Or live like a hermit aloof and alone.

 

I don’t write to hurt to condemn or bring pain,

I reflect on those lives not for living again,

I reflect on those lives that have no inner peace,

And pray that in quiet they find their release.

 

I once strode among them, I stood by their shore,

I wanted for nothing but wanted much more,

But here from the stillness comes comfort and care,

And  a hope for the hopeless when only they dare.