As Sunday Evening Passes
Kelley Lehr

I feel my star burning out
Dead minutes fall to earth
their soft silent ashes blanket
the tiny graves of stillborn dreams
and half-grown aspirations

I have killed them
All of them

Some died violently; smothered by fear and doubt
Others slowly suffering, pitifully
wasted by cold neglect
Starved, stunted, desperately deprived
Of faith and focus
Bested and blighted by step-siblings
sloth, insecurity and procrastination
How quietly the pretty things cried,
as one-by-one the lovely ones died

I attended to the trivial
ignoring the divine
Favoring right now
at the expense of forever

Compelled to remain in the mundane shade
I shielded myself from the blinding white light
With the ordinary occupations of an ordinary life
Until at last I was too old
And it was too late
And not a fault of mine

And now, shyly in the twilight
I still long for shiny things
And for the courage to strive unashamedly
To reach those brighter peaks
In a last-ditch effort to salvage the seedlings
Of one last generation of unlikely dreams
Of one last generation of unlikely dreams
That beckon boldly by night, in the solace of sleep
And suffer silently in the stifling shade of another busy day

Time (tick tock)
Marches on
as we stand
lost in moments

After working as a legal secretary, without much satisfaction, the author chose to pursue her craft as a writer. Kelley Lehr is a full time student at SMC and is an English major.