Someone was talking about older relatives,

Nonagenarians. I smiled, it’s your ninetieth birthday

Today. The earth still smells as sweet and cradles

Those plants you loved so well. When it rains 

The pond overflows as we splash among the edges

Any excuse to jump right in.  I still get lost.

Meaninglessly in time playing games when 

I should be working, waking to find there 

Is so much I still have left to do, places 

To visit, may be you were right and I 

Will be born again and again till I get it right.

The voids of the skies still call to my soul, 

The moon whistling a new tune that I often

Drown in noise and insignificant things. 

Fires burn and die out, a cigarette is lit 

To be stubbed out, no more, I keep saying

My voice an empty shout in space, yet another 

Promise I am struggling to keep. Time 

Passes, days bleed into years, nine

Are the universal elements that hold 

Our worlds together, I have to push on 

Smiling at all the right places till 

The ether. The stillness where you wait,   

Where birthdays are meaningless, decades 

Lost in the emptiness, where the clutter in my mind

Falls away to clarity and the sound of your voice. 

Only the sound of your voice

In the midst  of nothingness and void.

Where there is no darkness or light or life

As we know it. Only a celebration that has no end.