A fantasy found in abounding waters;
 A realm lost to time and surrounding waters

 Exploring, expanding, discovering discreetly
 The secrets of these astounding waters

 Another beleaguered servant sated
 By the echoes of time in the sounding waters

The mem’ry of a bright red barn in view
When you and I were one, instead of two —

A trip across the countryside one fall
The music of a bracing cold for two —

The passion of the nighttimes at hotels
A wandering trip to nowhere, just for two —

To hold hands in the car in some strange place
With that abandoned farm before our view

The mem’ry, trip, the passion, and the fall —
What love was/is, when kept between
Just two

The day is aging, broken-down, decaying:
The valor’s not in winning, but in staying.

As feelings bubble up, and come, erupting —
A voice is raised, a sinning, but not staying –

Does breath come fast or slow? Is grief corrupting?
Dismaying though each inning be in staying —

For every type of harvest, there’s a reaping;
And so the new beginning, found in staying.

The sky that patient waits, for Owen’s keeping:
The stars tonight are spinning – love
Is staying

A chocolate ice cream sandwich – very sweet –
There’s nothing else right now I’d rather eat

The day so far’s been hectic, I’ve been irked;
But right now I have something good to eat

I took a homeless man to Taco Bell;
I’ve never seen someone so glad to eat

My now-employed son has a bank account;
We celebrate with something good to eat

So this dessert is here before my eyes
Though soon it will be gone in moments sweet

And what is life but all these things in one?
One day we all will sleep
For now
We eat

We’d take our trips for three weeks at a snap;
My father planned each trip out on a map

We’d drive and all play games there in the car;
My brother in the front seat with the map

My mother in back seat there with me
To point out things of interest from the map

My sister sleeping from the Dramamine;
Oblivious to all things on the map

Economy motels, and simple meals;
The parks, the mountains, rivers on the map

Us singing in the car, all with our parts
Our voices in the car each trip would cap

The careful preparations of my dad
And mom to show us things beyond
The map

To show more grace is there among my goals;
The grace of baskets full of dinner rolls

In meals where food and family make up wholes
The smell of butter spread upon some rolls

And minutes flow as life should always flow
Where time slides by as moments ride in rolls

Where our pathologies have time to rest
And we don’t have to play
Our dinner
Roles

The toy boat sailed as swift as that wind blew,
Past where our eyes could see: and so did you

The days of toys that brought your eyes to life,
The laughing voices – one of them was you –

To see your prize possession safe again,
Us racing down the river bank with you

A boat that sits up in the attic now
Past magazines in boxes – quite a few –

A boat, a toy, a piece of who we were,
Alone, but not forgotten
Just
Like
You

The curtain hangs as it for years has hung
The choir leaves when its last song is sung

I left this school so many years ago
My feeble dances danced, and my songs sung

With bitterness and enmity of heart
I cast aside the songs I’d learned and sung

The enmeshed harmonies I shoved aside
The matchless joy I felt whene’er we sung

The music of young voices has no peer
The landscapes we created as we sung

But with the last song’s end, I turned my back
Upon the place where these red curtains hung

And choked alive a part of who I am
For grief of knowing, our last song
Was sung

the rain falls, we get wet, and that is that;
there’s no one hates the rain more than a cat

the days the gray will come, and block the sun;
and we’ve less expectation than a cat

what we don’t like – we still can lap it up —
and take in our discomfort like
a cat