I have never been a big fan of hospitals, yet here I sat.
Wordlessly, I held my Grandmother’s hand, listening to each breath.
She was somewhere north of ninety as she neared her journey’s end.
She was lucid intermittently, she spoke of departed friends.
She told me of her adventures; the mountains she had climbed.
Sunsets she’d shared with lovers who then parted by sunrise.
She told me of her voyages on Homer’s wine dark sea.
“ I leave this life with no regrets.” She whispered, soft, to me.
Those were the last words that she spoke though her heart kept on some time.
It waited for her spirit to resume her final climb.
A final lesson for her grandson; the good life requires chance.
A life lived too conservatively is no subject for romance.

A most remarkable woman; she parted here with no regret.
She experienced the best of Life from sunrise to sunset.

Now is the sixty-third Springtime
Of my life,
And the Summer of my contentedness
Tees up.
A fore-gone conclusion.

You keep me at eye level,
Examining for interpretations,
Think me either shady or too colorful;
That my perspective may be skewered.
You reach out to straighten me,
But recoil, gloveless.
Consider the Feng Shui
Of your living room.
Peer closer,
There's a face
Like a worrisome specter,
Like the picture.

Brittle in its’ reticence
Browning through its’ green
Blowing in the Autumn winds
There but seldom seen.

Leaf adrift in seasonal
Gutted by the fall
Bilious from summer blight
Encompassing of all.

Delicate in evening hue
Swirling in its’ flight
Zephyr powered freefall
Touching down to night.

M.

He was a shadow of himself, the man I came to see.
Time had robbed him of his strength; sapped his vitality.
This man who rode the badlands, this man who’d hunted game,
leaned on his cane to greet me; In fear of why I came.

We long had been acquaintances, I wouldn’t style us friends.
He was a politician, I’m a newspaperman.
I bore bad news to Sagamore Hill; He wouldn’t take it well
It was ill tidings I’m afraid, that I’d been sent to tell.

He had four boys in Khaki clad, all serving then in France
His youngest, Quentin, was a pilot, a fair haired figure of romance.
I think he knew before I spoke the reason why I came.
I saw it **** the boy in him as I pronounced the name.

The “old lion” died months later. He had so long been ill.
After Quentin’s death his father seemed to lose his will.
He was a shadow at the end, a soul adrift at sea.
I prefer to think of Teddy as the man he used to be.

That poor man, look at him sat there
On his own, shopping for one, no friends or love, bound for life in that hideous wheelchair
Do I talk for him or would that be a sin
It's the modern world, he does as he wants, his decision to be here, I'll leave it down to him
He looks up, can he reach that product, think I'd better go over and help
Can I assist you sir, shall I pass it to you or can you easily get it for yourself

Was this wrong as he sits now in silence, overstepping a mark of just plain goodwill
He looks up at me, a smirk of delight, and relief drains from me like the bitterest pill
Thank you young lady, as I hate to sometimes ask
As to you of course, it seems the simplest of tasks
Because this is not as it's always been, the paraplegic position of that poor individual
Fancy a chat, a coffee in the cafe, and I will tell you the story of how I became so crippled

A state of empowerment now downtrodden, as the view becomes less clear
It’s hard to tell in the blink of an eye, of a life we all so fear
Explanations, requirements, everyday necessities and drugs on a weekly prescription
I could bore you for hours of this tedious droll, but those things become an addiction
So as you can see, I’m not that wee poor man just looking lost in the supermarket
I have a life, I have a heart, I just can’t find a way to prove it

For I am a regular man, now operating in turmoil
As I have already put into the title
This para, really is normal

JJB