Fleeing Autumn Skies Poem by Uriah Hamilton

Innumerable rugged steps
Across the broken concrete
Of a desolate city
Have lead me to this place
Of spiritual dejection.

No one’s disposition
Is created in a vacuum,
No one’s psyche is established
In a single day,
No one’s soul is known
Outside the accumulated experiences
Of joy and sorrow.

My memories are woven
Into the fabric of my existence,
So many fibrous strands of struggle fray
And dreams unwind like balls of twine.

As a child, I fell in love
With the dark-haired Cindy Ossowski
Whom I was enamored of
Along with best friends
Scott Frederick and Paul Graff,
Gentle Paul is now several years in the grave.

On city park baseball fields
I played baseball with Mike Melnyk.
Mike now hobbles the same avenues of his youth on a cane
Having suffered brain tumors
And numerous disabilities.
His old father survives by sheer force of will
To watch over him.

On dismal Detroit streets
I’ve seen homeless men
Freezing to death
Seeking nickels and dimes
As I stood in line at theater venues.

I’ve suffered a marriage to fall apart
That was certainly more my fault than hers,
Unable to salvage love and kindness
That should have been written in the stars
With incomparable illumination.

I’ve composed a thousand poems
In the prayer-like night,
But every meaningful word
I sought to preserve
Has escaped like birds
Fleeing autumn skies.

People vanish
And best intentions fail to impress
But there is no purpose to second guess
The lonely pathways of a life
Concluding on a dead-end street.

I know who I’ve been
And who I’ll remain
As my dreams rattle skeleton-like
Walking feebly in the mist-like movies
That run continuously through my mind.