The Everything in the Everyday
Back when I could both see and feel
Landscapes like this I treasured;
But senses dull with age, disuse
And I’m now rarely pleasured
By scenes of art or nature, as
Capacities are fading;
Yes, losing joy is part of life —
But it’s
So damned
Degrading
The lines of frost.
The lines of frost across the leaves
Now deep within my face
And whence the once-brown hair had grown
The frost now takes its place
From Autumn into Winter comes
A chill that changes things
Beneath the dying leaves and frost
A seed
Of new life
Springs
A true story.
her thread came loose —
i was but a boy
maybe eight years old
and she
and she kept repeating herself —
she could not remember
what she’d just told us
and it frightened me
like i’d landed in a madhouse —
not my grandmother’s
new condo
where we came to visit
my mother talked to me in the car —
what’s wrong with grandma?
She is going through [what was then usually called] senility
She loses her sense of where she is, and
Time goes back and forth
In her head
but why?
It’s something that sometimes happens…
‘Senility’ is God’s way of reminding us that…
That the mind and the soul
Are not the same thing
will she get better?
No, son, she won’t.
Her mind will gradually unravel
Until she’s ready
ready for what?
To be free
I’ve been asked the question.
“You’re old,” they said.
“Why do you speak of love?
For everyone knows love
Is for the young -”
Indeed, I am not young, I’ve lived
A half-a-century;
I’ve seen the seasons go and
Changes rung —
But love, I think’s perennial,
It always comes around;
It has a way of
Filling up our lives
Until we can see nothing else
And no one else, besides.
It’s there with us,
And like us it
Survives
Confused.
When very young, I was confused
Exactly who was who
When starting school, quite overwhelmed
With all there was to do
In junior high, I was depressed
About the other sex
In high school, I sank lower in
All life’s other respects
I tried to join the Air Force, but
That didn’t go too well
And college raised more questions
That bewildered me, as well
Like how to earn a living and
How to become grown up
And why you should stop drinking after
Your beer’s been thrown up
My early working years, chaotic
New quirks came to light
Like: while I’m good at math
That doesn’t mean my checkbook’s right
And dating was disorienting
That game, so unreal
Like how you must pretend
Your heart’s desire’s no big deal
But somehow, I got married, and
Perhaps oddest of all
I had to learn to hold her purse
While standing in the mall
And children are confounding, they
Are so mixed-up inside
Because, of course, they’re just like us
Completely mystified
I did divorce, that’s all a blur
She wanted someone other
The day your wife merely becomes
Your ex, your child’s mother
Remarriage and stepchildren brought
A new type of chagrin
To realize your ill-equipped
For the role you’re now in
And now, I am past fifty-three
Retirement is looming
And life’s complexities will grow
At least, I am assuming
Because our minds try to make sense
Out of what is too great
We sometimes only stop to breathe
The second
It’s too late
I stopped way out across the field
And walked back through the snow
To where the old church sat in state
Just like in years ago
And empty on this weekday morn
I heard a faint wind-chime
How many places have I loved
That I forgot
With time?
He stands with a tray of Chick-fil-A
Out in the mall food court;
A man who’s in his seventies
The quiet, smiling sort
And he gets tired on his feet –
For he stands most the day;
So people ask him why he doesn’t
Just go home, and stay
They do not know his heart when
They suggest that he move on:
The grief he finds at home
These lonely years
Since she’s
Been gone
