Grounded
A Lunch in Pittsfield
By: Charles Giuliano - Feb 24, 2018
Grounded
Lunch in Pittsfield
We talked with melancholy
Grounded after 26 years
End of blue sky
That flight we took
Not so long ago
Looking down edge of abyss
Where all have been
That moment in every life
So much art, poetry
Religion and philosophy
Each in our own way
Not one like any other
Different as snowflakes
All other experiences
Not overshadow our own
Dance on precipice
Sleep perchance to dream
Absurdly to wax poetic
Make of it anguished art
You scoffed at that
Such arrogance of self
How dare to speak the unknowable
Defy the rites
Up yours to priests
Curse God and die
Shun smells and bells
Ashes to ashes
Ultimate dust off
Not stand mute as all others
Death a fact not contest
Age a gradual demise
Sobering reality of decline
Mostly gone you said
Ever more precious
Daily increment of what was
Not yet no more but
Ever less it seems
Can I tie my shoe
Come sit by me
Here upon the ground
Still wet with spring
Let us talk of kings
Falling like reign
Not an epic like Dante's
Perhaps a slight moment
An intimate comment on
All that was and will be
Our meager middle passage
The merest blip
Tree dropping in dense forest
Uttering its sound
Falling with a thud
Heard by none
Possibly a few
Maybe me and you
A word or two
Uttered in eulogy
Into the ether
Thin vapor of memory
Wafting forever and ever
Space is the place