A boy, I marveled at the clouds,
So strange and wondrous in the sky;
I’d spread my arms and try to fly,
Admired by the watching crowds.
I knew that I would not stay small,
One day my shoes would scuff their fluff —
But now that I am large enough,
I rarely look at them at all.
So many times, before we die,
We’ve died to all we ever dream:
And clouds become just so much steam,
And boys who dreamed become
Some guy
Sitting at our kitchen table,
Eating cereal with sugar,
Watching them go through the careful
Ritual of making coffee
Always, bigger kids and grown-ups
With their ceremonies daily;
This one, with a smell like almonds,
Orange light from pewter shining
Steam from off of cups while carried,
One who stops for milk and sugar,
While another straight to sipping
Plows into the morning paper
Parents can be such a mystery —
What are all these words they’re reading?
Worried brows across the table,
Span that seemed a hundredfold –
Sitting at our kitchen table,
Eating cereal, observing;
Memories like fresh-brewed coffee
Full of steam, then disappearing
The life that I remember
Is like a falling star,
So brief, and so ephemeral,
And only viewed afar —
The life that I remember
Had meaning, I recall —
But flashed so short, it seems
Like it was never there
At all
In spring, you feel the newness of it all.
Each feeling is a flower, fresh, unique;
Like love or loneliness, each one is pure,
And beauty of discovery hangs round
The edges of the garden path that leads
To who you want to be and where and how —
In spring, you feel the newness of it all.
Summer on the edge of madness
Broken in emergent song;
Love’s a shadow born of gladness.
Nights too short for days so long
Shades come down on pages turning,
Glances lead to bodies burning,
Tangled up in their intentions,
Loves and likes and cites and mentions —
Summer in the glowing garden,
Moments known of passing fire,
Ere the fall comes hearts to harden,
Towards the autumn of
Desire
In the cool of autumn, still
We stood and wondered how,
We’d found each other in
This savant maze
A capturing, a visioning,
A laughter, and a pause —
A hymn, but more of promise, than
Of praise
It came with resignation, and
It went without applause;
A family, a faction,
And a fight —
The autumn sun was fading, and
The days were growing dark,
And we were changing colors with
The night
With time, comes winter, with its chill,
And we must finally go inside for heat,
And memories of the spring,
When everything was fresh and new,
And summer,
When we felt how love could be,
When heat was running wild,
Autumn,
When we stood out in the cool,
The evening cool, and watched
The twilight gather with
Its purple whispers
Of a looming time;
A time we’ve only known
As parable
With age, comes winter, with its rime,
And frozen becomes attitude, and time,
There is a slower pace,
And giving up of contest, game, and race;
But character is fate,
And all we leave’s too early, or too late,
The winter has it’s way
There is only the challenge of each day
And dripping memories,
That melt like icicles from trees,
And spring starts for another heart somewhere:
Another heart and life
Somewhere
On nights when we could see the stars,
We wondered at the glory;
Ablaze in constellations, each
With some amazing story.
The sky turned blank; our love a thing
To place in a museum —
But, oh, the stars, they’re still up there:
Even when we
Can’t see ‘em
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 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
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
“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
