by Mark Purcell,

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE WE MEET

I have wiped the tears of your weeping child;
You have held the hand of my dying father.
I have inhaled the breath from your first kiss;
You have stood at the altar betrothing my spouse.

I have walked through your world;
You have lived in mine.
We have cried each other’s tears;
And we have leaped each other’s joy.
We have celebrated each other’s victory’
And grieved each other’s defeat.
You understand my journey,
For you, though in different place and time,
Have walked my path;
And I understand your wanderings,
For I though in different place and time,
Have roamed your ramblings.
I have stomped your childhood grounds;
You have gone around my adulthood blocks.

Though strangers have we been,
And strangers we shall remain,
We could in a different life
Be best of friends, closest of kin.
All lives are so thus entwined,
And all experiences so thus parallel,
That being understood and understanding
Should never be so complicated
As is far often too true.

Last week you walked with your son
Past me in the market, shopping.
You reached over to him,
Caressing his head and neck with your hand,
Reminded me of my father,
And my father’s father,
And the feel of the texture
Of my own son’s hair and skin
In the caressing palm of my own loving hand.
That was why, stranger and brother,
When you looked my way,
I smiled…

©2009 by Mark Purcell

====================================================

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

Today could not have been
Without yesterday’s haunting wind
Blowing by and changing my life,
Stirring up realities and other sundry strife.

The happenings of this hour
Would rightfully have no power,
Without the joys and pains of past,
Shaping and creating me at last.

Had even one conversation been altered,
Or one person or event faltered,
This moment in which I now breathe
Would not now be, as is, conceived.

There is a Great Choreographer, somewhere, someplace,
Who orchestrates my moves and your every pace,
Matching our steps in infinite, perfect time;
Then, this dance, once confusing starts to rhyme…

©2009 by Mark Purcell