Every Life We Let Slip By

Cool. I love the idea. (I still own this, right?)

Every Life We Let Slip By

Every life we let slip by
Is a sigh, a ghost that haunts, for it should not
Have died. It is a gasp of desire
Spat into the fire with a hiss as it goes,
A dream sucked into the night, gone,
Absolutely gone, yes, that’s a cry for
Freedom, born in assertion, devoted to motion,
Flowing, flying, broken but going,
Whole and entire and all around us here.
We can’t let it go, not so simply. The air
Is full of these: the care and fear
Of lives released into the binding sky:
The sticky web of stars that wraps and entraps
Our fugitive dreams, that thrusts them back to ground
To root like seeds, to be transformed,
Reborn. Tomorrow we will set the house aright.


Eric Butler