Leaving, I walked down a hall
And past an open door;
And old voice, crying, said
She couldn’t take it anymore
The doubly trapped, who outlive life
With only strength to shout –
In nursing homes, and body-minds
That will not let them
Out
(“Doubly Trapped” – 4-11-2017)
You wait for something you have never seen,
As though by looking you could make it so;
Your every sense on edge, and poised, and keen,
Your searching eyes still scanning to and fro
For in your mind he’s coming – coming soon –
For all of that’s worked out inside your head:
It’s any minute now, or night, or noon
The field of endless pleasure that’s your bed
You know he has to know the way you feel
For he has made you feel it when you sleep,
And when you wake, and all points in between,
The need you have is everywhere, and deep —
The hours drag, the outside world still hums,
And you wait for a man who never comes
They called to say you would no longer eat,
Or take your meds, or try to live at all;
The first I ever knew, at last to go
To follow Dad behind the giant wall
We love, but then in parenthood, it seems
That love is asymmetrical and strange;
Yet nothing is more normal than this love
That bonds us past our years, and strength, and range
There comes a time when we must yield the ghost
And move offstage, for all our lines are done;
But how I wish it need not be today,
As do us all – we creatures of the sun
I know I must accept this fate, this choice;
For from you came my reason, and my voice —
And still I wish it wasn’t – wasn’t so —
That you would leave,
And I watch you
Let go
When thoughts unbind
And words are free to flow,
I realize
I probably need to go
For there is only so much
One can take;
And things but bend so far before
They break
blue highway:
stretch of infinite
and moon glow
where dreams go to fly,
and men make
clouds out of campfires
