River Shoal

Often it is during times of death that we become the most insightful, risking our comfortable reality by delving into the unknown. Maybe by doing so we'll discover the intangible, but none of us can grip this unfathomable place we often call heaven. We can only imagine what it'd be like. While I'm not a religious man, I think deep thoughts. That was the case when a good, good friend passed away. I escaped into a world of words and tried to picture what I thought the journey would be like if I could go there and back again.

I feel the cold river on the toes of my soul
I’m dreaming of my pot of gold in a future yet untold
I gaze up the river to where branches caress memories old
all the while my soul seeps into the water’s
of River Shoal

I leave my body heaped thus and swim away like a great fish
I follow the unassailable current down, away in bliss
what of all I left behind, is there anything at all to equal this?
There should be so many things
I would dearly miss

During these spare moments I continue like a ghost observed between
the earth and the moon and everything seen
but this future is like a great broom that dooms my dream
and the past merely the needle and thread
that holds me together you see

My journey ventures down river only for a time
I journey back up these water’s in search to find
Answers to my past that clash with my future and mind
There are so many questions I have but my recollections
are like rhymes

You see it is my hope to find a part of me
deep in the damp canyons echoing with forgotten memories
but it seems I can no longer ignore the looming darkness that bleeds
Today I come to heal the heart and soul of me from a past
that breaths

My ether soon shudders, feeling the cold slowly creep
I lay immersed at the bottom of these dark waters covered in stones and weep
My memories press persistently, soon must come my defeat
Cause everything that you hope you could hold dear
is something the river can keep

Knowingly there comes change, romancing the past has a cost
My memories remember me like a broiling sea, up from the bottom they churn and toss
I glare up through these clear cobalt waters, breath in a cleansing spirit of trust
With life there is a future we must all embrace for otherwise
we are all lost

One day I will pass into this river and flow
to the heart of the ocean where all are delivered in tow
into the life blood of Mother Earth we each must row
but today I seek a different road, my path leads to a future
a place I must go

So in the throws of life, my body is refilled with soul
and like a child born crying and screaming, I awaken a newborn foal
Life is magical and living isn't a toll
I have found myself it seems on the shores
of River Shoal