Old Age Poem by Duy Bui

Treading upon dark sand, a woman was
seeking the truth of God, Who dwells high
beyond the gentle chandelier of
moonlight that hung above the sea;
shining in a place of flooding memories,
touching every pinnacles of curling waves and billows.
Her breathy sighs filled the noon’s pillar of light,
as rigorous fog crowding the night.
At certain moments, the waves would rise swiftly
and scraped time off her mind, though not her body.
Too often, she saw her life as an opened
barrel that was placed under the vast sky where time has past by, and moved on leaving many shadows of sunlight and rain behind.
When the barrel was filled and overflowed at the
right moment, it would yearn to be free.
Free of the piercing memories and
from the truth that all lives spear forward
and toward what earth calls death.

She has reached an age superior to most
storms or beautiful skies, higher than any threatening clouds
or vowing rainbows; knowing that thoughts and
feelings constantly renew themselves as
seasons would, so natural, and yet, sometimes
heaven seemed to dwell within the next footstep that she would take
to etch a new design of intention upon the endless sand.
All the rivers that she has visited or bathed in have grown
with her, though she can’t help to feel that, like her,
most never truly reached the sea.
All things, living or not, human or not human,
magical or unreal, love or fantasy that was sewn together
by our world or our Maker has lived its own journey,
before it arrived in our lives.
Her life stories stopped when sickness came by,
pulling death closely behind.
But in those desperate visitations, her true
and boundless journey began.