Tag: Relationships

Midpoints

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Personal Essays1 Comment

We mark significant beginnings and ends when we are aware of them. But we frequently aren’t aware, except in retrospect.

Once we are aware that a first time has occurred and a last time is coming, it becomes about what we do with all the times in between. Otherwise we miss the moments themselves, which is all life is comprised of.

My wife and I have been married going on 26 years, and we are currently are on a vacation together in Nashville, Tennessee. A little mental math tells me that we are almost certainly closer to our last such trip together than we are to our first one.

Almost every good and beautiful thing I have in my life traces back to her, and I hope a day never goes by that she doesn’t know that I cherish her and all the moments we get together. Long love is not about putting on a show, it is about showing up.

And she always shows up for me.

Too Many

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment 
Too many days go by untasted, 
Too many chances bypassed, wasted —- 
Too much love goes mute, unspoken, 
Hearts without hearing languish broken — 

All too often, our choice is thoughtless, 
Heedless of all that life has taught us —-
Too many headlines stark and sprawled 
For that one friend we never

Called

more different

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment 
you were a habit, 

but less like binging than 
like breathing -- 

i saw you daily as 
a part-filmed spirit 

reflections on a lake 
i'd never been to, 
let alone 

been in 

but after years made 
out of frayed yarn 

there came an apple-day when 

there, from a tree in 
a lost backyard 

we climbed a stepladder 
our heads among the fresh leaves 

and you 

you could not have been

more different

There’s Always Someone Better

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment 
There’s always someone better 
Who’ll make you feel today 
The way that you deserve to feel. 
And who says, anyway, 

What’s right or wrong within the heart? 
You need, you want, you feel, 
While promises were idle things 
Unthinking and

Unreal

When I Call…

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment 
WHEN I call you, I hope you know 
That every longed-for Spring 
And every treasured Autumn is 
In every kind of thing 

Between us said or else unsaid -- 
For this I know, and true: 
When I call you, it is because 
There's always 

Only

You

Maybe A Middle Way

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments 
Not all of us can do a flip 
Not all of us can juggle 
There need not be a fight, although 
There always is a struggle 

For if we'd see in different ways 
We must get off the bus 
That shows us only the same views 
That reinforce our "us"

The high sun burns us all the same, 
The winter cold all stings -- 
The common ground's outside our walls 
And made of 
Common 

Things

A Fingerpainted Moment

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment 
She asked me to come see her. 
We walked beside the bay, 
An omnipresent sky above 
A fingerpainted day -- 

She asked me not to leave her. 
I said I had to go,   
For the sun goes down on everything 
We'll ever feel 

Or know