“Let’s walk,” you told me.
So we went through the old and rocky avenues.
We spoke about the life
Of a grain of sand
And all of its journeys,
And all of the places it knows.
This is an excerpt of a poem from Grains of Sand. To read the full poem, you can download the book via Kindle or purchase the paperback from Amazon.
Grains of Sand
COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Colton Babladelis
Excerpt appears courtesy of Winter Goose Publishing
Autumn came
With an October wind
That brought a crisp hue of orange
To the canopy of the city
A sea of flickering lives
Hurried about
When the autumnal winds blew
How much does love weigh?
Enough to keep a light heart from floating away?
Nourished by absence,
It grew heavier
Day by day
And although neither promised
A single tone carried enough
The final moment said enough assurances.
I am a droplet of water
Born in the clouds
Fallen to the sea
A single drop among the waves
Battered by the elements
Taken to plunging depths
I am a droplet of water
Born in the ocean
I am the entire sea
Thanks to my very talented cousin, Amy Stoll (https://www.facebook.com/AmyStollPhotography/?fref=nf) for putting this together!
God looked down at me
With tears in his eyes
The ocean in each drop,
That salt burned
The freshly opened wounds
A hole torn through
My chest ripped open
But his tears did cleanse
And in time passed the pain
After 40 days of death
And 40 nights of birth
Broke the sun
From humble clouds
In the shape of your face
The heavens opened
For but a moment
And I saw all of eternity
A vast plain of peace
As clearly as a reflection
I looked at the future
As vision of grace
And joy became us
Salvaged from damnation
Ashes turned to diamonds
Your heart shone
A stone, stolen
From the depths of the earth
To the palm of my hand
A maddening brilliance
That lit kingdoms afire
And set hearts into frenzy
A constellation
Every tooth sparkling from its own nebula
Cosmic music bursts violently
From a collapsing galaxy
As your laugh wells up from deep time
Your eyes glitter back from tomorrow
A reflection of the stardust of creation
Your lips
As lonely as the moon
With its half crescent smile
Tracing the sky
Behind a crooked orange paintbrush
Up until an infinite wave of space
Engulfs me in the soft pillow
Of your hair,
And the shadows of the sunset
Put me to sleep in your smile
I woke up a poet
Most days in those years
In the beginning I was a painter
But my colors always ran
When the sun shone I was an athlete
Near water I was a fish
I wanted nothing more
Than to become the air, or the sea
Some days we philosophized
Touching a metaphysical reality
As we imbibed all of our indulgences
But most days, I woke up a poet
Those years were riddled with questions
That came about as I wandered
Down dusty paths
And forgotten alleyways
Questions that played out in my mind
In verse and in rhyme
A Poetic Voyage 