poem: challenge

You egged me on
asking to race for a modest amount of wealth

me in my old truck
and you in your sporty younger self

she placed a mark
to know where we should start and find an end

a month on the moon races like
a day with you, dangerous old friend

can you with everything you have and less energy
bring more of you than when you had a sunburst will to give?

is your love deeper than you were stronger
all those years before?

could you finish this distance
in a way that would fill a greater lore?

I sat with her rocking in a tree
the moon above and below me

I asked of her greater things
of auras eclipses and phase rings

I asked of the scars coating her face

I asked if she dreamed of orbit 'round a greater place

I asked if the waters within me
were sopped up and jostled like a hidden sea

She said she would only speak of one
before she turned to a mirror sun

"The star shines on me in every way

An interstellar interrogation
An examination array

It asks if I am hurt or whole
but I am somewhere between
a strong and wounded soul in my gleam

To hide my scars is impossible
bury my perpetual marks? unthinkable

So I wear these craters like robes, you see
they never diminish the light I give

Every strike and every blow
beams the bending light like a bow
to new directions, new possibilities

you feel it in the cavern of antiquity

that is why I will always sway
so you love every side of me"