Scattered

Today my thoughts have decided to scatter the way the leaves scattered weeks ago. Now the leaves lie decaying and I wonder if when I find my thoughts they will be like that— still, dry, slowly disintegrating, finding their way back to soil. I went out and looked at Orion rising from the woods, he nothing more than scattered stars put together by serendipitous perspective and imagination into that sketchy figure of a mythical hero. Even from Earth he will someday fly apart with the universe, but he will probably be forgotten long before then. Perhaps he was someone or something else long ago, and perhaps part of him is part of something or someone else from somewhere else even now.

I see no patterns among the dark leaves lying in my back yard. They will be gone long before Orion or even me. But my thoughts now, those fly apart almost as soon as I become aware of them. They lack the endurance of leaves, let alone stars. I see no patterns in them, either. All I can do is let them flutter into the darkness with not even insects for company on these chilly winter nights. Perhaps they will come back someday and make sense, but for now they are like vague images in dreams that seem to almost mean something but never quite do. But rather than trouble about them, I lie on the leaves and watch the stars beyond the bare branches. There's Orion.


( Sunday Verse )