My world shrinks with age. Too
much time pruning what is
left of my life like a
bonsai tree until it is a
tame and demure
little thing.

Can the real self ignore the
howls outside our door?
Can we love the world
into submission,
dream it
into peace?

Nothing to see here, just
dainty, snaking branches,
never reaching for things they
know nothing about.

Every day a trap door opens up
and some of us plunge into another
shrieking surprise.

Others dance on the edge
of the inferno.

I want my miniature, well-trained
world back.
But I know too much.

The sky shifts,
braids moonglow into clouds
and hides the starfields that time
moved on from. Still I believe,
even while dwindling in
a cage of riddles . . .

I still believe someday
it will all open
up and pour, in one loud chorus,
through the crumbling dream,
and I will be surrounded
by answers
to yesterday's questions
in a place beyond
form and separation
and pretending,

in a place where everything
beautiful lasts,

where everything perfect
never truly left
because,
I will realize,
I never left God.

Patricia Joan Jones