Empty Train

Empty Train

I was sitting in the park today

Reading a good book

Watching my young children play

I heard the sound of the approaching train

Off in the distance

Beyond the river

The train came by

Crossing the river on the great, high bridge

Making quite the commotion

Stopping the traffic

Turning heads

No longer reading, I felt a notion

Then I noticed something

The engines were pulling nothing

Nothing but empty cars

No goods

No solutions

Nothing, nothing at all

Just empty car after empty car

Disrupting the placidity of the afternoon

At first I thought

“What a waste,

What a waste of time, of resources

What a waste to haul nothing around at all.

All this nothing cacophony disturbing our thrall.”

But then I thought, “What if they are returning the emptiness

To the place where it can be filled again?”

What if wisdom, our eternal friend,

Is trying to teach me to see things in a whole new way?

What if wisdom is trying to say

“Don’t assume all of this emptiness is a waste”?

Sometimes I have to give up the less I’m holding onto

In order to grasp the more

Sometimes I have to carry my emptiness

To a place where I can be filled again, implore

I must cross the rivers, traverse the mountains

Find someone with whom I can be a friend

Make plenty of noise for all to know

My emptiness is there for fulness to flow

The Void

The Void

It is strange to think that emptiness

Can carry such significant weight

How can it have such a powerful impact

Dropping boulders so heavy and great

They leave my heart a crushed up mess

Like grapes trodden on the ground

My heart it yearns for any sound

That would bring some purpose, some meaning

I’m so tired of trying to force the rhyme

I’m so tired of trying to play the rhythm

These damned distractions do so hinder the art

The art of the effortless beauty

But sometimes these fanciful ideas are myth

They contain a truth,  a touch of bliss

But in the end they always fall short of the filling

So I must move on to find the truth that is fulfilling

But still I have yet to find it

I know these facts inside my head are inadequate

They have no colors to paint the hues of the masquerades

They have no tinctures to match the escapades 

Of the ones who live life so completely

But I believe most of these are dead

The skies are dark, the blood is red

And I just sit here in this meandering state

Frustrated more than ever that this heaviness within

Cannot be described with mortal words

Or mortal wounds

The dog is yipping in the bedroom

Reminding me of the mundane

The ritual we all walk, insane

Doing the same thing every day

Without any vivid recollection

Maybe it’s time to stop the vapid reflection

And instead point my heart to a source

A source of everything the universe is made of

A source of everything we’ve never, ever known

We speak of it all as dark matter

Yet we cannot even measure it

Much less give it an appropriate name

Whether we see it or not, it is all the same

For it makes everything in the universe to be different

Diffuse, unique, mystique, eternal

Whether black or grey or red or vernal

I know not

All I do know is that even in the discussion

My emptiness is no more

Time to soar