Ryan Hoffschneider

November 12, 2004 - Nebraska
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bubbles in the afternoon

Bubbles in the afternoon
Blown on the back porch.
A gentle breeze caressing its way through my hair.
Looking into the eyes of people I once knew
Glimpses of the past.
Not a care in the world, for everything was good
Laughing at ourselves all day long
Amid the popping of those childish domes of soap.

The thing with bubbles
Is that we create them.
However big, however small
it’s up to us.
And suddenly, they’re gone
With no time to appreciate their value
Their beauty.
The work of our hands
Now nothing more than a figment of memory.
Then, as the prized creation
is lost to the history of the mind
We go back to make more
only to find the same result.
Futility.

Blissful ignorance of the moment
Only to realize time
as an irreplaceable commodity.
True acknowledgment only found
when that silly little shiny orb is long gone.
I suppose the same can be said for us.
Living out our dreams
Forming connections that last
Stressing over things
that ought not be stressed over
Overlooking the riches
that give our existences worth
Regretting what was
Anxiously awaiting an impossibly distant future
Without a care for all those bubbles
Popping right in front of our very eyes.

Immortality
To create something that holds meaning.
A legacy that won’t simply “pop”
Like all those childish, translucent spheres
Left to disappear into the void of times forgotten
Our living moments
Surrendered back to the authority of the elements
Reduced to names eroded on pillars of grief
The struggle with the finitude of our reality.
Tears from the realization of an inevitable fate.
How could we ever create something
that becomes us?
Extends our being past the limit.
A bubble that can withstand
the sharpest of needles.
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