Dale Leffler’s poem Hearth Beat: for my poetry group appeared here May 2013.

A Half-Finished Life, a Comma
By Dale Leffler

Painting with eyes closed on an internal canvas, a watery world dissolves,
richly colored reverie resolves into a memory,
images of a hazy, lacy shawl shaped by the wind pressed against an unknown face.
Green fir pine tree tops curl the clouds round each other, on a backdrop of brilliant blue.

Sun chases the moon across the sky until the stars undress,
the naked night makes love with She-earth until it returns,
then, shyly slinks to redress beyond the mountain’s face.
I long for that loving touch, the spring breeze exhales, urging
high sunlight to awaken the forsythia and crocus as my adventure alarm.

No road is far enough for me when I feel the tightening tug of winter’s short leash,
tethering me so close to home. But, with ides of March arrival, I dream of the places,
the faces, the vistas, and sun reflected chrome of a day-long into night-time roaming’s
as I paint lines of where I’ve been on my GPS map, mile after mile after smile.

There are faces that will not leave me and there are places that I can never leave.
No matter how far I go, it can never be far enough or even close enough to be enough
for wherever I go, my words will be.
A halfway journey, a half-finished life,
death, not a period.
But perhaps, like an interlude for a cup of black coffee,
a comma.