There Are Times

There are times,

When the world crumbles like chocolate chip cookies over vanilla mountains.

In the vastness of temporary forevers,
There will be times,

When the ground shakes as though it were a marshmallow roasting on an open fire,

In the hands of an impatient boy who can’t wait to smoosh it against the tectonic plates,

Of graham cracker and chocolate.

Life will read like Aesop’s Fables,

Except it’s meaning will never be obvious.

There will be no tortoise and hare.

No wolf in sheep's clothing.

The only certainty,

Is that there will be times,

When the poet dances around flames and tiptoes with similes that all say the same self evident truth,

That life can and will be terrible from time to time.

That life is the most unfair thing in the universe.

And in those moments,

Sometimes the only thing people can do is hold on.

To something,

To anything,

That won’t let go.

Mother Nature changes with the seasons.

Father Time dances a dance he cannot stop.

So the poet,

Knowing that petals wilt in the dark,

Creates flowers out of the strings of fate that will never fade.

Flowers that can be held on to in darkness and in light.

In cold and in heat.

Flowers,

That can be held on to as long as they are needed.

And let go of when their thorns begin to draw blood,

Almost as if to remind the world

Of their ephemerality

How holding on to to things that were never meant to be held on to is natural

But painful,

An act of rebellion,

Better left for the youth

Who bleed a lighter shade of crimson.

A shade like a parasol

Protecting them from the sun.