Whole Lifetimes Poem by Eric Cockrell

we travel whole lifetimes
through the mud and the mire;
struggling, fighting, loving,
dreaming, believing against all doubt...
to find our brothers and sisters
lost in the passings,
in the comings and goings,
of birth and death...
to find the face of our mother,
in lands foreign and strange.
to do the work of our father
in the ruins of our shame...
to know each other,
the scents familiar;
and hear the sound of our own hearts
beating in another's return!
we travel whole lifetimes,
on this journey together!


for Dave, Terence, Smoky, Patti,
Valerie, Juan, Robert, Veeraiyah,
Romeo, Rajendran, and all the other
poets who tend this fire..