The Cycle of Life

By: Danny Thomas

 

as i sit in the dusk summer light
on the back porch
of the house i grew up in
among the remains of yesterday’s
wake for my father
listening to a group of kids
on the next street
play kick the can
or hide and seek
or something
that induces hollering
and laughter
and general sounds of summer joy…

i am struck by how much they sound exactly like
we must have sounded
my brother and i
and the neighborhood kids
thirty-odd years ago

and, yet again,
by how this cycle
this circle
for all its hardship
and harshness
and heft…
is a beautiful thing…
a wonderful, terrible, beautiful thing…

and i am filled with a melancholy gratitude.