I am the night clerk
I work the graveyard shift
I've checked in many people
Never saw anyone check out

When they walk in
the night bell rings
I think
What's all of that crazy thunder about

I've checked in
the wild and weary
the tormented and scary

The pious
the martyrs
the dancers
the fishermen

Even
Bob & Ted
Carol & Alice

Clark Gable
he stayed here too

Everyone looks me in the eye
pleading for a room,
I have many
the night is late
only the dead are awake

Some nights, though, it can be quiet
I put my feet up on the desk
watch another season of the soap opera
The Young and The Restless

There are no regulars
No one returns
Not even
the dopers
the smokers
the flatulent
the token takers

When everyone is checked in
That crazy thunder it stops
But the night is long
There's sure to be another storm.

O Lord of tender mercy,
Could Thee cast thy light
Of sheer healing so heavenly
Upon where I lay bedridden this night?

O Lord of tender mercy,
Could Thee please quell away
To oblivion such a twisted malady
That hath perturbed me since yesterday?

O Lord of tender mercy,
Strange is the malaria, headache, flue,
And cold that hast rendered me helpless,
Yet from shores they ply, ain't got a clue.

O Lord of tender mercy,
Could thy steady ear hear me now,
Hear thy sons far cries on how I do fancy
To dwell in blossom? To thy glory I bow.

From the framed picture hung on the wall
Two faces look nobly down
The faces of my grandma and grandpa
Taking me to the times gone by

Smiling at their wavering progeny,
They retell the saga of their blissful life
A life of selfless share and care
Inspiring generations in their travail

Curling back to times and climes primeval
I hear the sound of their footfalls aloud
In a humble dwelling, joyfully they lived
As children of the soil with hands full of toil

They worked together from dawn to dusk
Greeting every new dawn with fresher zeal
Their hearts were securely fastened in love
And had needs minimum and complaints nil

Two fountains that sprang from sources different
Had merged together before their early teens
Through wedlock they had been customarily bound
At a time when they hardly knew what it meant

Had played together as buddies for long
Until instinct made them man and wife
When fledglings were hatched in their little nest
They worked together never knowing rest

Hit by adversities hard, at times they sank very low
But with resilience, bounced back
And frugally saved every nickel and dime
To meet the needs of their growing household

They tottered together in the evening of their life
Serving as prop to each other when about to fall
In their twilight years, ambling the corridors of memory
They reminisced sweetly the joyful events of life

Now they lie together in the same churchyard
Two streams that evenly and tranquilly ran side by side
Never once been shattered on the rocks and shoals of life
Making one wonder if their life is History or Fable

In the swelling magnitude of our life
Though trivial was their share
Yet they stay as beacons of light
Leaving a trail of light to blaze our paths

I can't be
someone I'm not
But atleast the someone
I am,
Won't be soon
Forgot....

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

12 years have passed since I’ve last seen her in this life.
Distance and sickness in our being had robbed us both
of streams of time which passed like a long cold winter
into her death. These lost memories often create over-
exposed and superimposed photo negatives of imaginary
frames of time I desperately imprint to hold tightly in my
heart and mind.

But I still hold tightly in memory to her soft voice on the
phone and pictures of split second frames of physical
time my sister would send me. Many people don’t even
have that.

In this life she loved to mother her three grown children
and flower garden as near as
she could to the end. It was
in her nature to nurture us--
her perennial children--
and to help make the move easier for her literal annual foster children plants taken
from a confined potted existence to a deep soft warm bed of comfort.

Stamped on my mind is not the faded and worn, bruised
and torn image of her outward shell in the Trauma
Center at age 88, but the indelible inner and outward
image at age 38: a lovely young mama who tucked her
little boy in bed every night with a song and a prayer.
The little boy that is still alive in this man.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.