Alive and Incomplete:Ode to Truth

We forget March by May,
and by August
who can recall the lingering frost?
Truth, so like the seasons,
fades from memory,
then arrives again like a stunning new discovery,
wearing familiar, worn traces
that I almost recollect.


Like trying to store a snowball,
I tried to protect you safely in a poem,
where I thought you could not escape.
But you can’t be contained
within my meter or rhyme.
There you wane.
Like an infant
who dies when he’s not held,
you must be constantly embraced.

I wished for your work in me to be complete
with the conclusion of my poem.
I thought my words would seal you,
like a final decree.
Or perhaps I could preserve you,
like a masterpiece,
to gaze upon your beauty and admire the finished work.
But you’re more than just a tour de force;
you live and move and breath,
and this completion I seek would be your death,
then symbiotically, I’d cease.

So grow, mature, evolve.
Rephrase, revise, amend.
Return, expand, and live.
For your life gives me freedom;
and freedom gives me life.
Since life and completion
cannot coexist,
arrive again like a season,
that we both may live.