(First published in the Facebook poetry group Poets All Call)

Coda

Loves are lost
And irretrievable
Notions tossed
And blurred but grievable
Etched, embossed,
And I believe a full
Life is a song that winds down with a coda
Neath chupah or ceiling or scrolls of pagoda.

Woe-infused
Yet laughter-adjacent
Doom-bemused
Though joy’s ever-nascent
Thrice-accused
Of tales somnifacient
The weary composer welds landmarks with themes
With a filter of dreamstuff and not-as-it-seems.

If a song
Has many verses
Overlong
And laced up with curses
Quell the throng
Until it disperses…
You’ll find common threads in the lilting and lulling
And capstone that ending with smooth-water sculling…

Birth comes with cymbals
And nimble progression
Toddling percussion
Concussive succession
Wrought adolescence
Will test your endurance
Fledgling adulthood’s
Long stood in demurrance
Then the adventures!
The dentures can wait
Yearning and romance
And slow dance and Fate.
Now violins
For the sins and the story
Now muted woodwinds
Rescinding vainglory.
Soft notes that dwindle
Unkindle the flame
Your life’s coda ends
Yet ascends
All the same.