Chilled Night

I step out of the dark quiet cold and into the warm din of the coffeeshop. The late night comes alive as the happy chatter of people fills my ears, removing the blanket of a steady chilled breeze.  I'm part of this now, I'm feeling it, enjoying the love and life.  Perhaps I'm just a solitary soul in this din, but it's okay.  Take me in, let the tapping of these keyboard keys add to the distractions from the descent into stillness.

Suddenly I see, just beyond the glass windows, the form of a homeless youth I've served breakfast to. He isn't looking up at us inside, he's quickly moving in the night I know to be cold but no longer feel.

He was only there briefly, he only stopped a brief moment a few feet away from my privileged position, to inspect something on the bench outside. But he's moved on, probably seeking warmth at the shelter.  It's another community, one totally unstable, only suited to saving people stuck at the bottom, but hopefully he'll find a bed. I'm left here wondering.

How quickly this warmth and safety was brought into perspective for me. How quickly I am aware.  I still appreciate this din, I'm still thankful and in love with the life around me.  But perspective, right?

A bed of granite

When you saw the sun set and space come into view,
Did you feel like falling off the side of Earth?
When the Milky Way remained ever new,
Did it really seem to be a birth?
While clinging to the planet with all strength,
I saw the stars all pulling me away.
The light that stretched across my vision's length,
Was burning just as brightly in the day.
And so I stumbled down the mountainside,
Swallowed in the cracks of worth and time,
And wracked with doubt yet somehow full of pride,
I lost myself amidst my selfish crime.

They say, those poets and those knowing men,
That I may lose horizons that I know,
But tomorrow morning I shall once again,
Commit the deeds that stop the nectar's flow.