Sunlight and Shadows

Finding poetry in star dust, sunbeams, and passing clouds

Category: Metaphor

  • Slippery

    Sometimes it seems that all my tires do is spin

    No matter how I go, I cannot ever win

    I’m accelerating on a bed of ice

    And get stuck even deeper however many tries

    I have zero traction when I try to make a turn

    Direction is not changeable until I crash and burn

    I press the brakes, there’s nothing there, the pedal hits the floor

    I’m skidding, sliding, swerving just to keep from hurting more

    I can see where I should go, I just can’t find out how

    There is too much snow and ice to leave where I am now

    Until I realize, it’s my tires, and get out of my car

    Can’t change the road but I can change what all my actions are

    On skis I learn to glide and ride together with the snow

    I can turn and steer with ease toward where I want to go

    I pick up speed, I slow and stop, I’m fully in control

    The snow and ice no longer block, but help me reach the goal

    ,

  • Height

    I’m so afraid of falling

    Now that I’ve climbed this high

    The rocks so loose and foreign

    I’m hanging in the sky

    I thought I’d never reach it

    Slide back at every try

    This height still makes me dizzy

    The air so cold and thin

    The ground so far below me

    From where I did begin

    I fear that I’m too weak from

    The hard places I’ve been

    You tell me not to look down

    But where I want to go

    To trust the ropes to hold me

    From tumbling down below

    I’ll focus on my handholds

    And trust in what I know

    ,

  • Storm

    Waves crash over me

    My boat is lost at sea

    Winds gust to and fro

    And I with them go

    Skies so dark close in

    Can’t see where to begin

    Hopelessly off course

    No way to reverse

    Yet there is a light

    Piercing through the night

    It will guide my boat

    If I can stay afloat

    I can turn the sail

    So wind does not prevail

    The compass still will show

    Which way I should go

    ,

  • Constellations

    Deep, dark, great expanse

    Lies stretched out around me

    Dotted with distant stars

    Almost too far to see

    Many mirrors, a mirage

    Who knows what’s there, really

    Space sealed into time

    Someone lost the key

    Images float by

    Fact, fiction all collide

    Reality warped

    Reach for ropes to guide

    Dark universe of night

    Where can I hold on

    Time slips through my hands

    Wait through dark til dawn

    ,

  • Pressure

    On the edge of an explosion

    So much packed down now inside

    Tiptoe by to keep it quiet

    Push it forward, let it slide

    Too many words to decipher

    Too much meaning I can’t decode

    But it’s pressing, moving faster

    Taking me down some unknown road

    Unfamiliar, overwhelming

    Trying to sort out what is real

    Too good, too bad to know for sure

    Too much judged now by how I feel

    There is a way to sort it out

    To let the facts and feelings fit

    Pass through without an explosion

    Find peace within, inside of it

    ,

  • Nonsense

    I wasn’t really sure if I was right or wrong

    But the elephant in the room showed where I belong

    All the way to town I was looking for a shoe

    When all along all that I was missing was you

    The hardest way to go is to try the wrong way first

    You never get the tune til you sing the second verse

    You can talk to me til you are blue in the face

    But do not judge until you see the tortoise win the race

    Why is life so mixed up, I’ll never know for sure

    But someday it will all make sense if we can endure

    ,