This Isn’t My Neighborhood Anymore

On 2021013020210130 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

This isn’t my neighborhood anymore;
This isn’t the place where I start each day –
Habitual turn to come up this street
I lost awhile back when we moved away

But we raised our kids in a house back there,
And what seemed important then now seems small:
The hopes that we had, and the agonies –
They, none of them now, seem to matter at all

And as I drive by, I feel shuddering,
As though the last ghost just passed through my door:
It, all of it now, has just flown away —
This isn’t my neighborhood
Anymore

Home

On 2021013020210130 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems11 Comments

This place is home
because it’s “us”

Now we can be us,
because we’re home

This is My Mom and Dad

On 2020110120201101 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems12 Comments

This is my mom and dad
About ten years before my birth;
Where it was taken I do not know
I think somewhere on earth

But there’s a story in how they’re looking
Each at one another;
And somewhere within that look there came
A father and a mother

To three little children, a girl and two boys
As different as dawn, night and noon:
They, of course, did not know all this back then
But they would find out soon

They traveled the world with their children in tow
As each one came along;
From high mountain peaks and the valleys below
With sorrow and with song

Just one other family, I guess, to those
Whose god is “society”:
Obscure and unknown to a fame-obsessed world
But everything
To me

Giants

On 2020081520200815 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

I was the young one,
They were the giants;
Laughing across dinner tables,
Looking down at me through
Glowing wrinkled faces;
I was a marvel to them, they said,
And I believed them,
All my superpowers on display,
As off I went on still
Another adventure.

Now I am
The old one,
Looking out at them:
They are marvels to me, I say,
And I mean it:
All their magic powers on display,
But it’s I who, too soon,
Must be off on another

Adventure

Wayward

On 2020010120191230 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems8 Comments

“I’m sorry,” – I heard that,
But then the rest was hard to hear –
“I should have told you months ago,” –
And my mind raced with fear

“Bye,” her sad voice said,
And then the voicemail ended there
To leave me hanging on
And questioning exactly where

My stepdaughter was now,
And what had happened, knowing she
Had once again resurfaced
From her life of misery

Her drug addiction demons
Having driven her away
And us not knowing where she was
From day to fear-filled day

And now this message. Broken-hearted,
Aching for my girl
Who, cast away, unhappy
Languished somewhere in the world

When softly, gently I heard knocking
On my study door
And opened it to find her there,
Much as she was before

As she threw arms around me,
And as many tears were shed

“I’m home now, daddy,”

“Welcome back.”

Like my heart –

From
The
Dead

(“Wayward” – 11-9-2014)

Arizona

On 2019123120191230 By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems8 Comments

I drive here as I drove long years ago
When my old father chatted by my side;
He spoke of hist’ry, mining and the flow
Of his thoughts, ever brimming long and wide.

But now I ride alone in silent thought.
My father loved this land, and understood
That life is cruel, and time is precious bought —
And things that
Make you smile
Surely
Good

(“Arizona” – 11-8-2014)