Wasted Despair Poem by Barry Middleton

I

It seems right and logical to begin in spring.
April seems kind this year, the trees waking,
the light, perhaps the new grass and leaf,
with little doubt, claim the earth lives on.

Foolish despair, proclaimed again by jaded
poets, is of no regard to the young lovers
whose plans assume another year comes
as the golden spring sun blesses their dream.

Thinking doth make nothing so in the finale.
So the opinions of fools or wizened scholars
share an absurd stage, staging for infinity
where brains are dust and poetry recants.

II

How can I now in age recall the rivers;
rivers that washed the memory of youth?
The river in spring was baptismal,
the preacher, progeny of slaves and mud.

The river washed away the sins of man;
the river's stain hid the sins of hatred.
Yet the truth of the river was between
hate and love and only prayed for life.

The river took in life, moved on heedless,
calmed and cooled the heat of summer,
the heat and greedy lust of spiteful men,
a blessing, a curse, a pride and a shame.

III

It is said we must make life our own,
spring, love affairs, waters or deserts.
Choices come and go, laughter, tears,
somewhere in the middle comes a sigh.

Humanity is large, multitudes cry out
for love and hate, serenity or conflict.
Spring comes again and summer rains,
promises of daffodil, hyacinth and lily.

Tended gardens or untouched wild,
seasons rise and fall, night, day,
and dreams and memories linger,
melody and chaos curves into space.

IV

Beneath the shadowed care of time
a universal clock records millennia.
Mystery seems all that is or ever was
except what desperate fools proclaim.

High on a hill an imagined poet issues
a protest to a god he does not claim.
The prayer, to let the world live on,
to let the spring come in once again.

Nature's first green gold flashes
in sunset fires. There is an ending,
a sounding ending that begins again
as thunder comforts the earth dream.