To The Future

First, I'll write the words of a love song - a love song to the future.
Transmitting through fingers more used to keys than to either pen or paper.
To claim the title; writing words committed to describing the world I live in,
but promising only a glimpse of me, of my inner universe.
I have written many to myself, privately without knowing how,
and these are for you.

I want to sing a love song to the future ...
loud and proud, soft and soothing sometimes.
Like Oprah -
determined to sing a song that tears at each fiber of my heart
as the words send me reeling off toward the edge,
cracking desperate to claim it,
fitting words to emotion to melody,
teetering on the verge of tears,
hoping that my song will endear me to you.

If you ever hear my voice,
I hope my pallid, gross approximations irritate you into discovering
Sarah Vaughan, Minnie Riperton, Prince,
Teena Marie, Patti LaBelle and Sylvester.
And Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, Donnie and Sandra St. Victor.
And whoever else you might discover in these remnants.
They have sung away so many wearies,
so much pain, sometimes, so sweetly, for moments and even longer.
These voices, probably more than anything else,
illuminated the spiritual possibilities of this world.
Between breath and wafting curls of incense,
I hope you hear more than loneliness ...

I probably can't tell you much about beauty -
I'm sure, like the oceans, even more of it surrounds you -
but its constant meditation beguiles
as waves crashing to the shore,
fluctuating between the immediacy of knowing
and more common uncertainty.
I want you to know a beauty so complete that it doesn't move,
that doesn't bend or chafe, shrivel up or age prematurely ...
that recognizes itself as its own requirement.
Today I can imagine that love could be as beautiful,
but I hope this is something you can know without doubt.
Or fear.
In the midst of the world that surrounds you.

And to carry around beauty,
to wear it outside unabashedly -
brazen in sun or streetlight,
diaphanous scarves in the colors that you choose;
I wish this for you, too.
To touch and taste a freedom
that we usually do not,
then to sigh in utterly shameless contentment.
And to revel in your reflections
... and in other images.

I began to understand this through lenses -
in each picture, claiming it and the moment,
recording what words can not:
each play of light and time.
I hope you see this conversation.

You will find these things,
these trifling grains left wrapped up
in clotted paper, plastic and phosphor -
some left over from what was given to me.
They are the vestiges of my life's work -
to leave something that propels you to even higher flight and broader vision.
However, if they serve no purpose and hinder your progress,
give them away - throw them back up to the wind!
They have done what they needed to do,
if they've showed you how I loved you.