When the candle finds its end, it does not mourn the wick.
The flame has no memory of tallow, wax, or oil.
And still the dead pass something on. A conjurer’s trick—
The way a word, once spoken, waits like seed in frozen soil.

We did not come from somewhere else. We rose out of the clay,
The carbon and the calcium, the salt, the ash, the rain.
And when we’re done, we don’t return; we never went away:
The field, the wind, the rotting leaves, the earth without a name.

My grandfather outlived three flags, saluted none of them.
He said that countries come and go like weather, like a cough.
What lasts, he said, is smaller: how you treat the stranger, when
The stranger has no power, and the cameras are off.

The river doesn’t know it took the mill, the bridge, the road.
The vine that splits the palace wall grows patient from the edge.
What we mistake for malice is just patience, slow and cold.
Time doesn’t conquer anything. It has nothing to avenge.

The grave collects what we were sold: the title, deed, and gold.
It doesn’t ask if we were right. It comes for young and old.
But what we gave for nothing—that, it cannot hold:
The hand held out into the dark, the trust before we’re told.

The stars will burn to iron. The seas will leave their salt.
And everything we built will join the earth without a name.
But something slips the ledger—call it grace, or gift, or fault:
The love we gave for nothing. The open hand. The quiet flame.

A hand at war with itself spills water—
It cannot tell the keeping from the slaughter.
But palms uncurled, freed from their own grip,
Find the river waiting, risen to their lip.

A listening mind is not a bolted door—
It opens like the land to what the heavens pour.
No fist to clutch, no hand to cast it out—
Just rain received on earth long parched by drought.

Let what is rising rise. The crest will break.
The hand that fights the wave drowns for fighting’s sake.
Let it swell, let it sweep, let it spend its crest—
Water finds its level. Then—only rest.

The stone does not seek stillness. It is still.
It does not try to quiet its own will.
Sit like the stone—not grasping, just aware.
The sky holds open. Look up. Meet its stare.

The tree came down. The stump is what remains.
Storms filled the rings—each one a year of rains.
From the wound where bark has dried and curled,
a blind green shoot unfolds toward the world.

And you—still here, still breathing, still awake.
No truth to grasp. No oath you need to make.
Just this: the breath that enters and departs.
The quiet underneath your pounding heart.

He built a scope from antique salvaged glass
And watched the winter constellations pass.
Each night he traced their arcs across the black—
The light accepted questions, sent none back.

He memorized a thousand ancient pages,
The gathered certainty of countless ages.
At eighty, words dissolved before his eyes—
The knowing crumbles when the knower dies.

He swam against the current all his years,
Through tides of loss and salt-sting of his tears.
At last he reached the shore and turned to see—
The current bore him where he came to be.

At last he set the instruments aside,
The lens, the books, the oars against the tide.
He sat in silence, done with asking why—
And for the first time, heard the ocean’s cry.

He found no god, no answer carved in stone,
But learned that no one bears the dark alone.
He held a stranger’s hand and felt it shake—
Two bodies breathing for each other’s sake.

The stars stayed silent. Still, he lit the lamp,
Walked out into the cold, the dew, the damp.
No map, no gospel, nothing underfoot—
Just one step, then another, taking root.

He chose to love without a guarantee,
To plant a tree he’d never live to see.
No star nor scripture told him what it’s worth—
He made his meaning from the silent earth.

And when at last his breathing lost its fight,
He let his eyes go gentle into night.
He’d made no scar the cosmos had to keep—
Just held, and walked, and loved, and earned his sleep.