Barren Winter

The barren winter calls across the lake,
But what they hear are very diff’rent sounds;
Each sees the world on their own chosen grounds:
Results of choices that they daily make.

For she sees death in winter’s every move:
The cold becomes a penetrating freeze
That brings her down, somewhere past mere unease
To having nothing left to give, or prove.

But from the winter, he gains buoyancy.
Its very barrenness, a type of cleanse,
He finds his warmth in family, and friends,
And loving all life’s rhythmic tendency.

The barren winter light brings in relief
The shadows of their moods; each soul’s belief.


… a Florida Winter. — Owen

What She’s Like

She considers herself an average girl,
Who’s led a sort of mundane life:
This model-scientist-dancer-preacher
Who I happen to call my wife —

She was an entrepreneur for years;
She’s a volunteer when she sees a need:
She’s been a mother, a grandmother now,
And there’s not enough hours for her to read

All the books that we have, or she wants to have.
She’s curious and inquisitive;
She defends anyone who is ganged up on,
And knows, and believes, what it is to forgive —

She loves to move and she loves to laugh,
And she always gives comfort to those who mourn:
She as wonder-filled as the sea and the sky,
And’s had love in her heart since the day she was born —

She loves to come up with a better idea;
She lives to watch dramas that come from Korea,
She worries about the strange man that she wed,
But after a day, when it’s all done and said,

She closes the eyes on that beautiful face
Having made the world, my world, a much better place;
And I think, every morning, as I move the cover,
I can never quite say just how deeply

I love her

Empty Room Monologue

There is an emptiness at night
That morning’s never seen:
The throbbing pain of words we say
But do not really mean.

There is a slope, a precipice,
And safety is so fleeting —
I wish I was a tourniquet
So I could stop the bleeding —

But gnawing at my very soul
And eating of my ghost
Is all that I have said and done
To those I love the most.

So tell me now, you empty room:
What all is next to follow?
And how can guilt so fill me whole
And yet I feel
So hollow?