Tag: Memories

Which Lives On

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments 
The battle started long ago
As feelings turned into thoughts
Thoughts, into feelings
And the original memories pass into shadow

And we segment the evil we find in the world
Into those we deem worth fighting
And the rest, to which we effectively give license
Because the match

                   that lit the fuse

Which burned down until exploding
Which scarred and charred us into what we are today
Which burns still our surroundings and loved ones

Which darkens the brightest skies with yesterday's smoke

Which leaves us with seventh degree burns, sensitive to the touch

Which stirs the memory we will not recall




Which lives on

The Highland Girl

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments 
She's traveled almost everywhere
To cities, valleys, islands:
But longs now just to breathe the air
Out in the verdant Highlands

To walk along a keening wall
Among the Summer heather;
To stay until the mordant Fall
Brings cold and windy weather

She hears the pipes of old come through
The ancient voices call her;
The modern mother turns again
Into the ancestral daughter

first funeral

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment 
A boy of seven, equal parts
 confidence and unsureness,
 walking behind his siblings
 and his parents,
 headed towards a cemetery.

And the world is alive with green
 and his brother and sister
 alive with rancor,
 but his parents seem to be 
 some other place,
 some place much grayer, like
 a hospital room, with their
 quiet voices, and distant eyes.

And the tie around his neck 
 is vexing, he keeps pulling at it;
 walking what seems like miles until
 they get to a larger group of
 dressed-up people.

And so, now, this is death:
 dressed up people by a beautiful lake,
 his brother and sister jostling each other,
 and his own thoughts on what it would be like

 to be on the bridge of the Enterprise

A Bittersweet Memory

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

She felt the river take her back
To when her days were young:
When lights along the fireplace
And Christmas tree were hung

When somehow tears began to flow
From secret, aching wells:
The promised magic she once knew
In harmony

And bells

Lost Fields of Yesterday

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems9 Comments

Time, they say, heals wounds.
I haven’t found that to be so —
For through lost fields of yesterday
My heart will ever go

Love, I hear, takes time.
Well, time’s the one thing that I lack –
Yet to lost fields of yesterday
My heart keeps going back

I let it all just wander free;
I try to be more lenient —
I’ve never done emotions right,
They are most inconvenient

Yes love itself, I’m often told,
Is life’s great mystery —
Like long lost fields of yesterday
Where you’re still there
With me

 

(“Lost Fields of Yesterday” – 4-4-2017)

Nick’s

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

I took a girl here years ago on a date

I remember how beautiful the view was

I remember how fresh and delicious the fish was

I remember the setting sun and the ice cold beer

But

For the life of me

I can’t remember who the girl was

This Isn’t My Neighborhood Anymore

On 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

so often…

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment 
 revisiting where i grew up,
 i walk along a starry beach:
 the gulf is gentle, welcoming,
 the moon seems within reach --

 but childhood is not, i fear.
 so often, we remember
 the way things felt, not how they were.
 and so, this is blue december

 i will recall the world that was,
 and note, respectfully
 that those times were not simple, just
 made simple, then

 for me

This is My Mom and Dad

On 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