Sheryl

Sprouting flowers from your fingers,
While spinning melodies in rhyme,
You told me that the grass was yours to keep.
You told me that the air was full of sunshine,
That the rain was just its positive release.

You spoke as though you knew,
And so I listened,
Of the strange and distant land
Of halo's light.
Where men had danced in colors
With their feet up in the air
While the women laid white sheets upon the ground.

The light, you said,
Was born of love and laughter,
In beauty was it cradled
As a child.
In happiness it grew in time to manhood,
And in manhood had it offered you its hand.
But now I'm told you left the light
For a shadowed face in dusk,
Denying the life you left behind,
Your reflections in a darkened glass.

Your world of light was no real world
In which a cat could tread,
Though men have passed its gates and towers
And fed upon its ways.
You must not deny the footprints
You left upon the sand,
They tell of feet that passed beside the way.
Give your feet a gentle dusting,
Rob them of no rest,
Look back and see where they have come.

This poem is from Collected Poetry of Thomas A. Ekkens—Early Works.

Above watercolor painting of the author as a young man was done by Chappell Rose Holt, 1986.