And now she is only a scar,
you can barely see from afar.
It’s something I’ve learned to live with.

I can hide it well behind tears,
and it changes down through the years.
Just something I’ve learned to live with

When it happened, the cut was deep.
The fall was hard, the climb was steep.
Now, something I’ve learned to live with.

Though it will never fade away,
a wound from an unconscious day.
Just something I’ve learned to live with.



Go Vat
*The French Influence can be seen in this one, where there is a longer syllable count and a repeat line or word, and is believed to have become a popular form in the late 1800s.
It consists of a couplet of usually eight syllables, which sets the rhyme for the subsequent stanzas, and a third line which can be repeated totally or phrase or just the final word.

And now my friends a time has come, a time has come to die.
Like Summer leaves who's day must end, and fill the winter sky.
My Aunt is on her deathbed and her time is almost near,
oh Norma, my sweet Norma, let me whisper in your ear.
I remember Summer Sundays so many years ago,
my cousins Dave and Sammy with their fishin' poles in tow
we'd catch the evening dinner and a bottle fly or two.
Do you remember sweet Aunt Norma? Oh I hope you do.
And you'd toiled in the kitchen till you rang the dinner bell.
And barefoot Ginger would tell us to come in from the dell.
Hot biscuits, beans and apple sauce and catfish from the lake,
I would help crank the ice cream to go on the chocolate cake.
Only the fondest memories of you will I hold dear.
Oh Norma, my sweet Aunt Norma, your time is very near.

*For my Aunt Norma

Here, on the flatlands
I was put in my place.
formed and pressed
into their neat and presumably safe little box.
It's all they knew.
It is so hard to think of them as once children themselves,
formed and pressed.
Formed from a different time, with different conformists.
There are no manuals when we are born,
you get leftover instructions from previous pipe fitters.
Agrarian raised, like grain fed beef.
Complete with the fears and habits of bygone generations.
I leave one bite of each item on my plate,
with just enough drink to wash it all down.
I have done that as long as I can remember.
I want the whole candy bar, rather than just a bite.
Pressed and formed my Father saves.
He saves twist ties from bread bags.
He saves old welcome mats, and garage door openers.
He buys in bulk, and has two deep freezers full.
Full of freezer burn, tasteless, barely nutritious,
neatly formed and pressed portions of frozen in time Salisbury steak.
It is as if he himself would like to be frozen in time.
He is a depressionite child.
In the basement there is an old dresser that he found at a yard sale.
He painted it a hideous green,
but it has a formed and pressed neat white little doily on top.
In the top drawer there are various expired drugstore items,
some dating as far back as 35 years ago.
"You never know when you might need something in there."
Expired aspirin that has broken down into powder and smells of vinegar.
Vicks Vaporub, in the pretty blue glass jar, that is dried up and orderless.
All brand new and have never been opened.
Formed and pressed neatly in their little containers.
I watch these molders of my life slowly pass away,
becoming neatly formed and packed into their aging corner of the world,
neatly formed and packed into a stereotypical old folks home.
Forgotten, in the way, slow, aching.
Soon all they will have will be memories.
Soon all they will need will be memories.
Neatly formed and packed in their aging minds.
And then, like a comet that has shuttled through space
for thousands of years, millions of years,
they will burn out and fade into dust.
And their whole lives
will be neatly formed and packed
away,
in a trunk
in the attic,
to be opened like a time capsule,
at a later date.

*the result of a week with my 94 yr old Parents