Day 361: Bitter Sweet

I never had quite a dilemma writing a poem and then struggling for just the right words to include. It is one of those moments when an obvious contrast is not so obvious to your mind. I wonder if I am taking these long pauses for a reason, have I planned them in my head or am I slowly changing thoughts as they form in time as I write. Whatever the reason maybe, I know this one was a tough one where I had to decide the favorable or unfavorable taste that I want to leave with or maybe combine them into something simply bitter-sweet for you.

Bitter Sweet
Come take a walk with me into the unknown
Come dream of things we are yet to make our own
Feel these drops of flavor that stay with you
Telling a story if you choose to find or maybe write one too

What is bitter and what is sweet?
Are they the same to you and me?
Or are they transformed desired freshly plated
They are thoughts that are quiet, they are the unstated

Perhaps candy coated shells that hide
They are prelude to an aftertaste that survives
Yet reminders of things that for a brief moment stay
From sunrise to the end of hours this day

In time I will find, that from which I will learn
Where you could taste writings & thoughts you could discern
While the bitter and sweet will blend into just one
And I will leave you with words, perhaps recipes, only half done 

Day 360: Wandering Wanderers

Not all wanderers wander and it is the nature of travel. It is the nature of people to feel the need to roam and be lost and yet fall in love with nostalgia of just the same. I am amused by the need to travel, the notion of the wandering wanderers and while I look for no subtle hints of where to go next, I am fascinated by all. I am in the lost farewell at the airport you say, I am in the bus tickets you keep folded in your shirt pocket sometimes, I am maybe the directions you ask a stranger when lost and maybe maps  that you never use. In the wilderness of the world I pay an ode to you the wanderers who live in journeys every single day. While the whole worlds finds a place to be , you refuse to stay.

Wandering Wanderers
Why would I worry about tickets I am yet to buy?
Choose destinations before knowing if I could fly
I would wander without knowing I am a wanderer at heart
Just looking for places to go and waiting to start

For those who are lost among the familiar places
Who are forgotten and remembered in the everyday faces
Traveling home or far away from one
We have started to fade, but we have only begun

Am I a wandering wander at heart, are you one too?
If I follow no maps and directions, will you follow through?
For now I have no good answers; just questions on my mind
Why being lost is hard and yet is the easiest thing to find

In words that travel far and some that echo back
I am keeping notes of all the things of which I lost track
While we may all come and go, we will leave a trace
While the wanderers who wander, try to find their own place

Day 359: Words we Mean

For the next one week I will try to write perhaps the last week of writing before the project that ran a little over a year comes to 365 poems and a year or more of poetry writing. I have been asked by many about what I learned and though I cannot comprehend in the full complexity the nature of that, I have learned in bits and pieces. I have learned in good and bad times, in the best and worst possible of time and in hope and also in despair. I guess one thing I can say is that the ideas and things that keep moving me have never run out and maybe only slowed just a bit when I wasn't paying any attention. I guess it all comes down to doing something because you need to, and because these are the only way and words I can reach without knowing. These are the words I mean and for the last week they are with you hidden waiting to be seen.

Words we Mean

If either one of us knew
Time we collected & of moments so few
If all was written out into your heart
While we collected scratch space right from the start

Till the end of endless days were reached by just the two
We would walk endlessly and find places to go
I would wait till our writings like flavors of food
Would taste & feel different as much as they could

But these familiar spaces we walk between
The green grass and sunshine that grazes your knees
I will pick and choose the colors I need
I will follow no one and yet  I will let you lead

I pause just for a while and write the last 7 days
Because I have written for a year & yet I have much more to say
I pick and choose these things I write about
I am storyteller with last acts as the curtains draw