To wit, a man who sees his future before him yet stands idly, hands in his pockets feeling he owes an explanation. He wants to scream to the night sky but knows the futility of such an attempt. He wants to beg for something not yet made real but understands that nothing he can say will raise the flower from its seed. He meanders about the paved circles of his mind looking for some hard dirt on which to run.

Nothing.

Perhaps he offers too much, lays too much of his heart on the altar of hope to deserve a just reply from those gods. Perhaps his words have become stale to the ears with whom he speaks. Perhaps the futility is his only because he offers a future he alone can see. He cannot turn the water in his cup to wine, and he cannot wish away the seconds until the promised land touches his feet. Perhaps then silence should be his answer. Even the most loving eyes miss the light only in the throes of darkness, and the sweet non-taste of air is missed most in the sunken depth of nothingness.

To the soul wearer of my heart, an empty stare is offered in return for my glances. To the stars that hide behind time and space, I beg you don’t burn out before you twinkle in this sky. The dawn is coming and then nothing of this will matter. The dreams will end and the day will begin while the ears starve for your voice and the heart bleeds a name uninterested in its story. It’s the way of things until the spring flows soak the driest earth and the white-capped mountains transform into the greenish hue of renewal. Even then no songs from the sky are promised and the man with his hands in his pockets will be standing where he always has, hoping for a miracle to arrive.

It is the nature of things that the winter’s snows will arrive despite the prayers of souls seeking love in the sunshine. The gods do not heed the desires of such souls. They only know the singularity of their whims, desires, and fears. The frosty touch of Winter fears the sweet caress of Spring and no prayers, no honorable gestures shadowed in the light of love will change a thing. Winter will tremble at the sight of Her thawing, and Spring will quake in the thought of Summer’s arrival. The man will stand to look at this thing and that thing with fears of his own. Fears of an unrealized season in the unrelenting onslaught of time. A man who has a relationship with his mortality will watch the days fly by, powerless to stop them and helpless in begging others not to waste them. The dumpsters of our lives are filled with days wasted and dreams broken in the finality of breath and in the never-ending quest for just one more.

In the end, the man will just stuff his hands in his pockets, caressing sweet notes of love and hope left tucked neatly within. The tear that falls will land helplessly on the dust of his boots, stained with miles of trails walked in solitude yet dotted with what-could-have-beens and promises he always kept sacred. Perhaps in this version of the end, the man will know his age mirrored in the hopelessness of his solitude and he will just lay down somewhere and breathe his last. Some will read the notes left in his pockets and wonder how he could have possibly ended up here. Others will know the instant they read them.

He says goodnight to no one in particular and the echo replies mockingly in his mind. He knows that he needs nothing more at this moment. There is no one left to hear his blessings, so he departs the day with a dream in hand, hand in his pockets, and love flowing freely from his heart.