A Frozen Tableau

A Frozen Tableau

Snowy white backdrop

with trees and other

landmarks

like cars, and houses,

and people walking by

sticking darkly out

like brush strokes on

a painting.

Like a frozen tableau

which will be gone

with the sun, the

brush strokes remaining

and the backdrop strangely

gone.

Sometimes the things which

seem the most permanent,

are the most transitory,

and the most provisional,

well, the most durable.

Hard to guess which is which

until your backdrop has melted away.

...and then it's hard to trust what's left.

For fear those brush strokes will fade

away

as well.

In what do we place our trust?

What cannot be taken/stolen/

plundered from our cabinet, our

secret hiding places deep inside

that we don't allow anyone else

to see,

our treasure, our

little dreams

about the world

we thought

mom and dad

gave to us?

Once that treasure trove

our little dream of what life

was supposed to be like

is plundered,

what is left

for us to build a life around?

Because sometimes that's the real question,

isn't it?

Underneath snowfall scenery and

rivulets of the melted lie the immutable.

That which doesn't change if nature

is left to its own devices.

The unassailable

cycle of regeneration and growth,

the ecology of the human psyche,

the need for love and human touch,

the need to love, and to touch,

the need to learn, always learn

and explore, the inborn unconditionality

of motherlove to child and childlove to

motherdear, the sacredness

of each human.

Hands broken from pummeling frozen

backdrops which melted away

leaving only water to pound against

nothing solid, only ephemerality

to punch against, no satisfying

crunch of hand against something

which hurts, because it all hurts

more because of the powerlessness

of hitting nothing which hits back. And so punching

oneself into bloody unconsciousness

takes the place of lashing the world.

Snow comin' down now, like the sweet

rain which washes the dirt away, the

regeneration begins, and then freezes,

pretending to be reality, an end-product

for awhile, when it's only

a part of the cycle.

I have put my heart upon the frozen

backdrop and had to rip it away,

I have felt the cleansing wash of tender

flakes of cold against my cheek take the

pain away.

I sit still watching snowy backdrops

or melted streams of icy water, or sunlit

days with rain chasing after. I am me,

despite all, and the cycle of life I face

changes not, though

the frozen backdrop tableau

seems awfully cold this year.

In a little while it will melt and

the cycle of composition

begin again.

If I'll let it.