Death Of Dreams

What do you do
when your dreams are in reach
they hang like grapes on a vine,
yet your hand has to save another,
knowing you will have to watch
the fruit you longed all your life to claim
wither and die
without every getting a taste?

Love eases the pain,
but doesn’t keep the wounds
from bleeding over your life.

A few years ago
fate gave my wife and I
a chance to own our first home,
to finally after illness and lay off,
bankruptcy,
even being homeless,
not a mansion,
still it would be ours.

One plot of land,
ours to call home.
Not alone we would not have that dream,
my son and his family were in need,
so this vision,
this place of our presumed reward
had to be turned into a shelter.

Gone too were other hopes,
money for so many things we had waited
all our lives to try,
vacations and search for possible publishing,
small little tokens that might have brought fulfillment.

It has gone from survival to existence,
each day a struggle to meet our needs,
love the bond that holds us together,
faith in God the rope to dangling in the soul

Retirement is now an illusion,
no respite to the daily task even possible,
but we live in joy of having done
what was truly important.

Fatigue and exhaustion our steady diet,
no reprieve offered on the horizon,
barely able to make it through most days.

Though storm clouds never end,
crisis come constantly,
how we cherish taking our hearts
to be more than words.

It is a cross we bear,
unlike our parents how never cared,
though they lived in their affluence,
pushing aside the demons of regret
refusing to accept pill of bitterness.

Content to try and make a place
where perhaps our grandson
will someday live his dreams.