Looking on the past year,
I couldn't change a thing,
Throughout all the fights and arguments I would call here,
It also brought forth joy like a warm note on a nylon guitar string.

I saw my sons birth,
Where he held my finger in that operating room,
Where the strength of this newborn titan laid me low,
Tears of joy springing unburden to my eye,
Carrying me to a great height I never knew before.

I got to see him take his first steps,
Hear his first word,
And see all the other firsts along the way.

Every one worth the trials of life,
Working to support us,
Put myself through college,
Waking at 4,
Coming home at 8,
And sleeping at 12,
Working for 15.30,
And slogging hard for 2.

You were mad at my doggedness,
Angry at ignoring myself,
I know I waylaid my own needs too much,
Put too much on my own shoulders,
And sometimes I still do.

I promised you the world,
And I can like to think I can at least give you the parts of it you want.

Only now do I realize that the parts in question are not as big as I once thought.

I see you there,
My sweet warm spring rain,
Coming 'round that worn & weathered bend again,
My sweetness,
My Queen.

Glimpses of you,
Carried upon warm gusts,
Through the torrent of winter sleet,
Tempered by grace and kindness,
Making me see that sweet morning dew once again.

Making my head swim,
Sweat breaking from my brow,
Rivulets caused by the intensity of your love,
Matching any summer haze.

You carry forth a great message,
Of coming life in blooms,
Rather then heralding Fall's doom and impending gloom.

So sing to me my May Queen,
With your soft words of gentle wood,
The sounds of supreme love and understanding,
Calling forth in me everything good.

**** pets,
**** them for loving us unconditionally,
**** them for making us care so much,
**** them for leaving us too soon,
**** them for making us miss them.

Words hammering upon steel hoods,
Disappearing as fast as it appears,
Partially hollow yet oh-so full.

A good company of souls,
Filling an empty bowl,
Their stories and discussions filling it in a steady warm flow,
Filling it to the brim,
Overflowing,
A great quenching for my dehydrated trim.

Where can we go?
In this summer rain laden land,
What shall we see?
Untold relics of a forgotten state,
That ended in a flame wreathed wreck.
What can we hear?
The passing winds that are whisper-gentle.

Is it upon such a limbo I must dwell?
Where hope is lost and none is well?
To be in a state where hatred swells?
Where quarrelling is preferred to the silence of this empty well?

Tell me the truth,
But don't break me so,
For I lack the spare parts,
To hold me together for more,
Be gentle on my frame,
None too unkind,
For this dread is most dreary,
When the end is neigh.

Proclaim to me a trade,
For every crumb of food in the land,
Every drop of wine,
Every glimmer of gold in the realm,
And still I wouldn't trade it for a singular moment of time.

Oh, carry me on the winds of a sleepless dream,
Where there's fields aplenty upon the fiddler's green,
Where the woman is kind and the man is fit and clean,
Borne there upon St. Albans' wing.

Drift me off upon a fiddlers tune,
To a place where the sky is such a brilliant blue,
Where hope is abounding like those dog-days in June,
Where magnolias sprout forth like passion renewed.

****** me forth upon the lover's blade,
A more precarious place no other man can claim,
Where hope and love balance upon a precarious edge,
So easy to tumble off into that dark and void-filled death.

To be in such a state,
forsaking sleep,
Carries me to this strangest of dream,
For without such abstention,
And lack of means,
My creativity floweth out into an endless stream.