i tripped over the beautiful recollection of you in the sun

i tripped over the beautiful recollection of you in the sun
wandering away into the placid brown water
as your legs disappeared and shards of light scratched my eyes
you waved me to come; to join you

i did not because i did not want to move to wreck this dream
i was living. so i watched you and i smiled thinking {i could
remember it this way} so to me that
is
how it happened.

i know now it is an illusion. as memories are. photos are. words are
superfluous and subjective
i used to think: i will remember this moment by studying it and never
letting it be altered no matter the
changes over
me (over

you) we change as you know better than anyone else, because you've
captured that moment somewhere forgotten
gone through the tempestuous ephemera
flashes to laughter, cringing screaming, temptation to
meaning

it may be that this signifies something \ a godly design, a place
eternal. but i doubt it. that is our dilemma & one unquenchable
desire = truth. an abstraction we seek that exists in our playground
imaginations: buried deep in the sludge under brown water that
swallowed your watched body with the
sun tearing eyes. 

Goal setting

he always told me to think about goals
setting as if i needed to know
what would happen if i wanted to get
there

which i did not want to do and so he
thought me unruly like the sun
{blink to make it cloudy} little
one

he thought of me as a child in ways
perpetual, strident, jejune,
naive - insincere i was to him
young

he was old. it was not secret
ive in any sort of sense
not a surprise seeing his shriveled arms
numb

skin hanging bones outlines i could
caliper precise measurement, fate
determined stature, within inches. his
skull

knotted like an old oak tree lump from
a broken branch healed over
hundreds of years + deep roots
down

who'd plot that chart? sophisticate
sensibility striven to means
of an aged path on this soliloquy
over

i remember his toes, black blood
clotted mangled wood chips
as his last breath drew out his
body

he died then and there - in a bed on his back - with me staring
at him. a soldier on guard checking targets. words in memories: prepare
to fail, fail to prepare - and goals, ultimate goals
he reached [i will too] unprepared or
not.