I was born in a red brick hospital
when doctors still came to the house
and nurses were nice older ladies of 35.

The town was small but large
enough for us to play together
while our parents had coffee
without worrying who had invited whom.

Good things, happy things went on then.
The proud men worked the plants
while our mothers made our homes
and no one said either was the lesser.

I grew up in this believing the life was endless.
Then the town got big and the people shrank.
Concerns became fears and fears reality.
Today I saw a bulldozer destroy the old hospital.

It was many years too late to do any damage.

There is a train beyond my window tonight.
Far away it is, too far to hear the wheels.
Only the whistle calls lonely in the night,
Reaching me here in my exile
From who I should have been.

How I wish I were among the passengers
Bolting through the night aboard a
Fate that couldn’t be derailed by foolish choices
Or missed opportunity…or fear.
Sliding past the landscape in the night
Sure of arriving where you belong.

In my memory I feel the sharp edges of
My Broken dreams and recall the times
When the train that carried me was still on time.
That was then, now I lay awake and listen
To the whistle in the night and imagine
What might have been.

I slumped into my friend the chair and
Waited for sleep to carry me away somewhere
While reruns reinforced my nightly monotony.
,

Then the first wind of autumn ran ahead
Of its due date and rattled my windows rousing me.
I raised up and killed the tv.
Soft amber lamp light filled the room
And I could hear the low roar of the lake
Rolling under the wind.

I got up and opened the door to the deck
Then closed it behind me.

The wind carried the lake up to me
While the constellations danced through
The moonless sky.
The glow of Port Stanley rose from
The far horizon, between us one of the last
Boats of the year struggled against the
Wind and waves, making for Detroit.

The moment pulled me out of myself
My name was lost, my hopes and desires meaningless;
I became the smallest part of the endless night
Whose purpose was to be no more than this.

But the chill is more at home here
Than a human trespasser;
It drove me back toward
The mediocrity that sustains me.

One last look across the lake
Wondering if a Canadian stands on his
Deck wondering about me…

Her face was an indifferent mask
As I questioned her about
The child she was surrendering.
She confirmed the neglect
As if she forgot to feed a dog.

We went on together playing
The unfeeling ***** and the annoyed
Young lawyer feeling the power
Of who he thought he was.

The questions narrowed and
She fidgeted, then squirmed, then
A few tears leaked and the boy
Playing lawyer woke up
When he saw what I was doing
And how I was doing it.

He fought me with thoughts of
Our mother, and pity, and mercy;
But the lawyer had to continue
Even if his voice lost the condescension.
He went on as the girl playing *****
Began to sob then fell apart
When she said, “Yes,”

The boy became a man
Who has never forgiven the lawyer.

I knew he wasn’t there, but I had to stop
Tried to drive by.  Couldn’t do it
So I pulled up to the glass wall he sat behind
All those years in exile from what
Should have been his and looked in to see
Where he’d been the last time I spoke to him.

No surprise, he wasn’t there just shock
He’d never be again.

They hadn’t taken his things.  
His glasses were still there and car keys;
A picture of his kids.
Business cards with his picture.

I went in pretending he’d walk in from
Somewhere in the back and say hello
Then tell me to get a haircut like he always did.
He didn’t walk in..
“No gots,” he used to say
When something didn’t happen.

No gots anymore.
He’s gone and he took a part of me with him.
But I took one of his cards
Just in case I need some advice.

He sends us here for a moment
When the best of us burn with desires and needs
And the drives to light the world.

Others hang back in the dark,
Content with the anonymity of the blackness,
Comforted by letting leaders lead;
Even false ones whose excesses force them
Out to make things right again
So they can drop back into the limbo
Of ordinary lives where soaps and football reign.

And we do it all in moments,
Blazing time that is to short to count
From the stars.

"55 years,” she said, “That’s a long time.”
She couldn’t know the length meant nothing
What mattered were the moments
We did unforgettable things together.

Unforgettable only to us because they were ours
As we walked, ran, and fell through our youth
Burning past loves that were not
And challenges that were
All of which left movies in my mind
Of what we did when the future was limitless
And all that happened in the years it narrowed
Turning us into flawed men who
Tried hard nonetheless not to be.

55 years of who we were together from then
To today when a voice on a cellphone
Said, “He passed peacefully.”

I find no peace in this and
I will tell him so when the time comes.

The petals which had been so red
Are browning now and bow their heads
The limbs which held the greening leaves
Are garish colors now instead.

Everywhere that I can see
Summer is prepared to flee
From cooler days the autumn brings
Before the winter's frigid sleep

I stand among the morbid scenes
Of the dying beauty Nature gleans
By calling back what She bestowed
To the earth with summer's heat

They'll rise when springtime melts the snow
I wonder if the same is so
For me once I am put to rest
I wonder, will I even know?

She carries the weight of simple things
Forgotten people cannot carry for themselves:  
Where to sleep, staying safe,
How to eat enough without selling yourself.

She works in an office smaller than a closet.
There is a picture on her desk of the day they opened.
She stands between ragged people and
Smiling politicians wearing suits in an election year.
None of the suits has been back since, but she is here
Working among the lost souls and feeling guilty
For going to a home with heat, a bed, and food.

She remembers best the ones she loses,
And the rate of what she thinks of as her failure
Would drive her to quit if it were not impossible
To forget the next one who comes to her may be
The one who needed her most.

I looked away and you were gone.
Though I can still feel you here,
Smell you in your clothes,
Touch the things we hold dear…
But you’re gone and the only place
I can find you now is in my dear and
Painful memories of us.

I am only an echo of who we were
Bounding from the sharp edges of this life
Searching for my source, which is
The love we share even now.

How can I stay here without you?
And yet I must for there are
Others who would look for me
With the same terrible longing I suffer now.
They will suffer soon enough and need no help from me.

So I will live for now and pray for the day
When I will be again with you.

A quiet moment gathers itself around me
As I stare at pixels looking among them
For something great and compelling to write about.
But there is no wisdom tonight, no passion,
I am even empty of the need to cry for change.

I grow so tired as the quiet closes tighter,
Drowning out life by calling for sleep.
I drift  away and dreams of great themes come to
Me like old friends calling  to talk over coffee.

They are around me and we laugh,
Some make me cry, others...
Well, there are others too and I feel in tune with them
As I  never am awake.

They listen to me judging the worth of my insight.
Some smile, others chuckle and scratch their heads
As I try to fit in knowing I never will
Even though I will always try.
God, I love what I think I can make of them.

There is a nudge on my thigh,
They fade away as I wake then they are gone.
There is only me, the empty screen and my dog
Whose world is defined by where I am,
He brought me back to toss his ball.

My themes are lost in Morpheus' mists
They will be back one at a time and I will write
Inadequately of wonderful things with high meanings

Until them, I make these crooked marks for you...
Because, it seems, my world is defined
By where you can find my words.

He sat at a table in a suit that didn’t fit.
His shirt was open, a tie stretched across the void.
His eyes were forward, scared
Hands on the table gripped together so they didn’t shake.

The eyes that looked at him were not friendly
Most focused on photographs in easels
Showing what had become of a girl who made a bad choice
Then came back and made it again and again until
The power to choose was no longer hers.

A woman in a black robe sat above him reading
Then raised her head to look down,
“Do you have anything to say?”

Now they all looked at him as he rose,
If their stares had power he would have been dust.
Behind him one poor woman wept
In a room pressurized by silence.

A man stood beside him, leaning away.
The monster swallowed once gathering his power
To twist their thoughts as he had the girl in the pictures.
He made himself weep then in a shaking voice said,
“I loved her to death.  She was my everything”.

But the woman in the robe was that day deaf.

He’s hooked to tubes and monitors;
They speak to him hoping he will hear.
People test and probe reducing
Him to an experiment in a bizarre
Science fair where the best result is disability.

They cry for him, hope for him, pray for him
As the machines, hum, pump, and chime
To keep whatever he will be now alive.

I cannot see him there, but I remember
Days on football fields when we were young
Nights at dances with girls who teased us
In the clinches and sent us home alone.

He sold me my first car and we got old together
But not gracefully, not us.
We struggled against who we were
Trying to be who we thought we could become.
Failing and succeeding as we went;
Always friends who sometimes fought.


So much I remember as I lay here,
Safe until it’s my turn, and I wonder if he
Remembers who we were in that awful place where
They pray and hope to save what’s left
Of a good man’s life.

You feel it first with a sense left over
From when we lived in trees,
The force of it gathering miles away makes you aware.
Across the lake darkness falls in the afternoon
The waves grow short white manes
As they come now more quickly to the shore.
The temperature drops and a fresh breeze
Leads the way for black clouds that boil and gather
Coming now, coming harder, smothering the sun.
Beneath them is the dark veil of the rain marching.
You can smell it as it advances, a force men could
Never stop.  It comes, leaving a million scars on the water
In explosions adding volume to the noise of the waves.
The wind comes hard and I stand holding
The rail on a deck above the lake when
The first bolt sears the sky and roars.
I close my eyes and the rain washes over me
So cold there are no thoughts, just the
Feeling that for a moment I am clean.

I knew better, I’d been warned
By people I trusted.
But I ignored them thinking
They just didn’t understand.

How could they know this moment
Of mine when the apple seemed
So close and looked so ripe.

They couldn’t see her there
Half in the shadows watching me.
Who else but me felt my frustration
And the buzz of alcohol that enhanced it?

Oh, I knew who she was, where she’d been.
I know what she’d done and with who.
I even know she talked about it
So she could ruin the lives she’d never have.

But I was angry, a little drunk and had
Been rebuffed for a sin I didn’t commit
And couldn’t remember, which was a worse sin.
So I slammed a few doors and left.

Now here she was, my real sin
Waiting for a decision.

I drained my glass and stared at it
Convincing myself to step outside
Who I said I was and swore to be…

Then I turned and I saw her
Walking away, holding the hand
Of a man whose face I couldn't see.

She smiled looking back then shrugged
And I felt an impossibly heavy weight
I had not been aware of
Fall off my shoulders.

The core of me holds the truth I have
Hidden so well I don’t really
Think about it anymore.

I am more concerned with the story of who I am
That I tell to anyone who will listen.
I don’t think I’m a liar because
Everyone is hiding something
For some good reason
That no one else needs to know.

But the hidden truth leaks out
No matter how we twist the story around it.
It comes to us in dreams and,
When the voice beneath our reason shouts
Louder than our doubts and denials,
We hear it demanding to be free.

Some of us us comply
Releasing our truth carefully between
Crooked marks on pages others read.
Carefully I said, in tentative bits
Hoping for acceptance
We fear will never come.

And yet we write
Because we are helpless to hide
The truth that cannot be denied.
Thank God.

Clearing out boxes holding once
Cherished things, there was your photo, smiling
When once upon a time
Was still ahead of us
And our minds were full
Of excited emotions I no longer recall

We burned then like a fresh struck match
That flares for an instant, then
Settles into a fire that dies
Before the stem’s consumed.

I shake my head to think of
How I burned for you
And then the hopeless depths where
I sank when the fire died first for you.

Your picture is like a grade school drawing now;
An amusing curiosity I barely recognize
As having once been mine.

For I now know the slow burning fire
Which lasts a lifetime
And maybe more because the fuel is
In the soul and not the *****.

I burned your picture today and didn’t feel a thing.

The good things vary depending on
Who you are, where you live, how you think
And what you want.

But somewhere underneath the value given variations
Is the invariable truth that life is a tragedy
In which we play a role defining what we believe it to mean.

Played for the moment or the geld, life bores.
Motivated by self, it fails to satisfy.
Driven by scorn or anger it is best not lived

Life’s brief play is the chance to share
The depths of us with those who
Lend meaning to our existence.

Played true, the tragedy can be endured .

God, forgive me my thoughts.
Look pst my whims and follies.
Excuse, if you only will, the moments
Of my weakness when my humanity overcame
What I knew I should have done.

Please hear me now as I cry from
This tragedy which is the Test You
Have given us.

Let me find my way Home.

Heroes who were gather at the round table
Under Valhalla’s Golden Arches
Recounting the legends they lived.

They forget now the events of their day
But recall forever the moments of their glory
And the loves they lost who beckon from further on.
Their peers are fewer each year, their families
Shrink and turn from the old and trusted ways.
Most are alone but for comrades around the table
And none know who will be the next to disappear.

The tales grow with age as does their
Wisdom of how the world beyond the Arches
May be saved.  Their hearts are pure in this
Though their scars real and imagined, lend
Perspectives not all accept, but they are to be forgiven
For these are survivors of the tragedies of life.

For years I admired them, listening to the
Stories of their bygone world.
I think of them often now as I sit at
Their table watching the door for my friends.

He would’ve made you first if He thought about it
Maybe He did, make your first I mean,
because you are the fountain of everything.
And it grows uncontrollably from your bounty
Which is, I think, where we come in
Jealous we can help start but cannot  create life
So we give it order which so easily goes too far
And only has value when paired with your nurturing grace.

I suppose that’s why there is you and me and
Why, in our case, it’s good.

You don’t know the power compressed
In the gentle aspect of you,
The strength in a mindless gesture.
The force in a glance
The fearful energy contained in your whisper.

All I am and strive for would be lost
In the darkness of your indifference
Or shredded by a disproving look.

And if you willed it you could make me
What I should become, half a life
Made whole by the union of
Two souls who first met within
The mind of God.

You don’t know the power compressed
In the gentle aspect of you,
The strength in a mindless gesture.
The force in a glance
The fearful energy contained in your whisper.

All I am and strive for would be lost
In the darkness of your indifference
Or shredded by a disproving look.

And if you willed it you could make me
What I should become, half a life
Made whole by the union of
Two souls who first met within
The mind of God.

The dark heart of the night
Is close around me;
There is nothing to see but what
Spins through my mind;
There’s not much comfort in that

All the fears and failures dance together
At a party in my honor laughing like the old friends
They are not, mocking me they ask,
“Remember me”?

And I do and I feel again what I felt
And another space of my life is lost to it.

I feel the sweat, fists clenched.
My legs jumpy.  
But there’s no one to punch and no use
Trying to run away.

You can’t escape what you
Carry in your mind, and they know it.
So they laugh at me again.

Where the hell is the sun?

They are derelicts now in a lonely
Part of town even stray dogs avoid.
Broken, defiled, empty of the lives
Who made them roar and slam with
Machines building a nation, then defending it

Now they are empty, their purpose evicted
Then sold to lower bidders from lands they had to conquer;
Places making lesser versions of what they built with pride

The people they held bore children who
Prospered from what they made then
Shunned the labor which elevated them

But decay can’t change what they were
There are signs of it everywhere
Frescoes and cornices, brickwork and
Fading symbols defying the abandonment
Forced upon them

It strikes me now how similar we are

The air is too calm to bother with movement
The dew is too fresh to soil with my shoes
My body too old to push any further
How lovely to lie here with nothing to do

I look at him, not for the first time,
And wonder what is happening behind his eyes.
He is older now, white hair, longer
Than when he played football
Then gave it up for something more practical.

Settled that is, he won’t admit it
And he won’t admit he’s settled too often in life;
But I know all his secrets sooner or later.

I have seen him since we were very young,
Most of the time we get along.
Sometimes we fight, but I’ve learned to co-exist

Today he’s like a stranger to me.
I can’t read him and I don’t know
What he plans to do with himself.
I lean with my hands on the sink and
Stare at him, but there are no clues
In the mirror

Mom’s gone, taken when she was younger than me
By a bubble in a vein which had nothing better to do
Than break four hearts and send us spinning away from
Each other having lost the gravity of her love.

Every Thursday and Sunday she fed us what we
Called spaghetti, pasta being now the more fashionable word.
It came from her heart because that's how she was with us.
She cooked the sauce the night before then cooled it
In the refrigerator so the flavors would meld like
She melded us into more than we were, a family,
My family of whom my best memories died with her.

I see us eating together when we still had smiles for each other.
My brother and sister, who now hate the world,
And dad, who would always take a bite and say,
“Catherine, your sauce is like gold. Pure gold”.
She glowed every time he said it and he said it every time
We sat around her table eating pasta.

Mom knew we weren't sharing a meal when we ate her pasta.  
We were sharing her love for us and, in those days, each other.  

But my mother’s love is gone now like my youth and our family.
Irrevocably.  All of them.  Gone.  And I am less for it.

But I have those memories of Mom and the Family she made of us.
They fill me like her pasta covered with golden sauce once did.
Too bad you can't go home again...too bad.

I washed ashore blind with anger after the storm of my life,
And met a girl who loved rainbows.  
She found me, though she wasn’t really looking, and
Called out to me cautiously; for
She’d lived through a storm of her own.
We learned to know each other through the distance
Between us, enjoying what we learned and suffering,
At times, from the jagged edges of what we’d been through.

Trust that has never been betrayed came first, then
Friendship, and love.  Then came something more
As these three aspects melded into a union greater than the
Sum of them.  Something comfortable, something
Warm; a companionship of spirits gained over two decades.
That will carry us above and beyond and away
Where pain is forgotten, and the warmth lasts forever.

I have not earned this, it was my luck when I was blind
That she could see the rainbows after my storm…

Somebody died today, a cop in spite of which he’d always been my friend.
But they all were then when hate wasn’t the password and
Niches didn’t outweigh the Lady with the scales.

Think that isn’t true?
I was there then, a lawyer and a prosecutor
And there was so much less to be ashamed of in how it was done…

My friend who died was there too and he did it right
Then taught others to do the same.
When he left, things changed.

People somehow became categories and the law forgot Justice
So, things got bitter and that spawned something worse;
We’re living though that worse stuff now and for those who were there
Then looks so much better than now.

He knew how to do it and he did it for as long as they gave him breath
Now he’s probably doing it still on another level someplace.

Hopefully, it will trickle down.

Safe journey home, captain.

Something gentle woke me early;
You were beside me, warm, breathing easy,
With that young girl look that sleep leaves softly on your face.
I touched you and you sighed like you do and
Snuggled closer to me
I sighed then too and raised my face.  
That’s when I noticed a glow coming in the window.
I got out of bed and went to the deck where
I saw the sun announce
The morning with a fire burning in the sky and
Dancing on the lake behind our home.  
The world was only shadows then,
Before it lit the day.

I looked back and saw the dawn on you as if
You were the source.
I thought of all the dawns I thought I’d seen,
And I knew that until this moment I had never seen a thing.

I am one who always watched the sunset,
The end of the day is where I lived,
I never saw the sun on the rise
Or knew what the morning had to give.

I missed all those years so full of sunrise
Left there behind unenjoyed
I knew the dawn as just a noun,
A word I never understood.

But then I woke one morning to the sunrise
And saw all the colors of the dawn.
That was the day you came into my life
And made it a joy to carry on

The sacred, elemental fire of the sunrise
Burned hot between us from the start
The sun rises high every day for me now
Where the dawn is always in my heart

Breathe with me as we
Lay together.  
Feel my heart's union with yours
And let this night go on forever
By repeating it into
Eternity.

The world was a tapestry hung on simple pillars once.
They taught us how to see our place in it, what to do, how to act
Who we were supposed to be.

But we never saw behind the curtain
Where things never considered were boiling
And caught us one by one to change what was promised.

Who was prepared not to be loved, or for failure
Or to survive the death of traditions and the
Acceptance of something once taboo to be the norm?

The tapestry has changed and all the nostalgia in
My heart can’t restore what it was.  
I can’t embrace it, but I have a tool to cope.

“Go with the flow, Jimmy,”
My mother said,
“Go with the flow”.

Home, sick with the winter that
Is trying to **** me being held at bay
By a fire in the corner hearth.

I’m safe as long as it lasts,
So I stir it, and feed it, and draw
Out the fire’s life as if it were my own.

But there is only so much one can do.
In the end they say even the stars will burn out
Overcome by the cold, endless dark.

But that means nothing now, there is only
This fire I have been given to guard
And appreciate.

I wish I had always been so wise.

It is hard to say when she started disliking the
Girl in the mirror.
It was probably about the time they gave her braces.
Surely, she began to take only glances
When she got pimples her hair wouldn’t cover
Try as she did with different lengths and styles.

The worst of it started when her friends began
To round out and she stayed all lines and angles,
Like a child among young women discovering themselves.

It drove her inside herself,
Further from her friends, one of whom
Struck a devastating blow when the Girl overheard
Herself called a pimply stick
Just so a boy of dubious morals would laugh.

She started hanging the towel on her mirror then.
She told her mother it dried better that way.
The woman accepted this
And so the Girl in the mirror locked herself away.

Mirrors cannot show the heart or wit
Or the steadfast love within.
There is only the reflection of beauty soon gone
And cast aside for that.

If only the Girl could see beyond the pale reflection.

Some nights I stand at the deck rail
To watch the day burn out across the lake.
Behind me darkness devours the remnants of the
Waking world; transforming what we know
Into things we fear.

The waves, here all my lifetime,
Are gone leaving only the
Growl and hiss of an angry, unseen beast.

The flaccid light of the moon is no help
As it sends shadows like twisted beings from
A nightmare racing from structures
I thought could be trusted.

Even the wind blows colder, sending a shiver
Down my back as I stand tense in the belly of the night

I think, therefore I am not digested by night…
Unless the morning fails, as one day it must.
I hope this is not be what the endless will be,
I want what the nuns promised.

She should have been fine,
Right school, good family, right color,
But she was at the age when things go wrong.

She began to feel the weight
Of weightless things
And the need to be someone
No one could be outside the cover of a magazine.

So the doubt crept in and
Muddied her image in the mirror
Then frustration took hold
Because she couldn't reach a
Place that never was
Or ease the pain of that failure.

One bad day, the devil whispered
Through the mouth of a boy who knew her pain
In his hand a pill, he said,
“It's cool, everybody does”.

But she heard through tortured adolescent thoughts  
“Here is peace, acceptance is here, belonging “.

And so she did and did
And when she tried to turn away
The whisper became a shout, then a command
And the pill became a needle in her arm.
  
When money ran out, she started selling
Pieces of her soul in backseats, or ***** hotels.
The devil left her then, he had won.
No more promises, no dreams, or hopes or even fears
Only the need for something
No one ever needed.

Her world became an illustration
She maintained with just enough sense
To keep her on the street, but
It wasn't enough in the end.

Her mother found her in her bed
Afterward the woman always said
“She looked so peaceful and
So young. “My little girl “.

Somewhere the devil whispered,
“Peace” and laughed.

The fog came in and cut the hard edges off Monday morning,
Which really didn't do much good because a cold rain
Fell through it and soaked down to my soul.

It is the kind of day when reality bends and
The big questions beg for answers,
Like where does the spark go when it leaves?

I mean we turn out the lights, but the beam travels
Endlessly, the fastest thing we know, to the end
Of what?

The universe?  Time? (Whatever time means compared to eternity)

So, the light in our eyes, where does it go when the power is cut?
Or am I supposed to accept, Dr. Hawking, the light we make
Rubbing two sticks together is superior to the light in us because we
Can't yet find the formula for sentience or measure
It's limits beyond what we can see?

Big questions, foggy, rainy Monday and I am alone
A week after the light went out in dad.

I expect he’s out past Jupiter by now, heading home.

He’s also right beside me, I can feel him, thank God.

He left for good today,
It was earlier than expected and without notice,
Just a voice on the phone
Saying, “He’s gone”.

I went to the place where he lived
Hoping it was a mistake, but he was gone,
Hard to believe,
Difficult to accept,
But he is gone and my world is a lot scarier.

I’ve got his place now and I am not the man he was
Because he made it easier for me than it was for him.
He did this selflessly and with
Joy because I was his son.
  
Am his son.

An honor I didn’t have to earn,
Yet I want to be worthy of it.
So, I have to find my balance
And do what he did for me when it was his turn.

There are people behind me
Who need the things he gave me and
There are people behind them.
Though the shoes they must fill are smaller
Than the ones I step into.

Safe journey home, dad.
I’ll see you soon and we can talk about it all.
Rest well ‘til then

Just about everyone likes ice cream
You can please some people with chocolate, some vanilla,
except for people who  might like fro yo,
among them the ones who like chocolate or vanilla
unless they want sherbet.  

Or maybe you can leave them to their choices
And try to please yourself.

I think too much, and thoughts
Can be demons carrying fear,
Doubt and pain as they chase me
Down paths where there is no hope
And optimism isn’t even an echo.

In the bottom of It all, where the dark swallows everything
I find myself whispering “I want to go home”
And I am comforted by recalling a house
In a time when I was encouraged to believe
The consequences of not reaching for a better place
Were worse than failure…
A fable for kids that has been beaten out of adults.

Home, the place where I could always go
And they always let me in with a smile.
It's gone now, alive only in a whispered invocation
When the bad thoughts invade my mind.

Maybe you can never go home again,
But maybe its recollection is a seed
To a new home where my role is different
Though necessary to others who may someday
Whisper in desperation so the memory will let them in.

I don't want to be here anymore.
  Not just here, anywhere.
I rode through moments
  That hung on me like a chain of
Black pearls which got so heavy I
  Can't lift my head anymore to see what's
Coming.  If I could, I'd only regret it.
The pressure to be what was expected
   Built too high while no one had the pressure
To be what they promised.
  The expectations killed me


I don't want to be here anymore.  
  The reason I am is cowardice
Because I know this place and I can only
  Guess what's next.

How many were there?
Who were they all?
Where are they now?

Why can't I remember everyone who
was important to me?

And why have so many forgotten me?

Then I think of Life beyond myself and how
Things change to meet the seasons
And the challenges of fate.

I recall discussions of how successful
Species adapt and evolve and go on
And I’m struck by the realization
That Life means my life too, though
I find no comfort in that.

And in moments like these
I find miss them all, even the ones I can’t remember.

The sun will come up tomorrow,
the flowers will grow in the spring,
May love abound in your life and
peace to your soul may it bring.

Toward the end of every year, Christmas comes again,
To life the tired spirits for those of us who can
Celebrate with lights and trees and carols that we sing,
And all the warm and happy smiles expensive presents bring.
But December twenty-fifth to some is just another day
To bear alone like all the rest that drain their lives away.
Come take a look at holidays for folks you might have missed
As you hurried by them to buy your family's gifts.

Sara Jenkins limped along the sidewalk on South Main,
Her ancient, failing body was bent with cold and pain.
Her ***** fingers held the bags storing all she owned;
She walked alone and spoke to ghosts of people she had known.
The shoppers on the sidewalk stepped out of her way,
The sight and smell of Sara drove them all away.
No one knew old Sara, no one wanted to;
No one had the time for her with Christmas things to do.
She hobbled down an alleyway behind The Deli Suite,
To find the empty packing crate she crawled inside to sleep.
She turned a corner, dropped her bags and gave an awful howl,
A delivery truck had crushed her crate against the Deli’s wall.
Sara scrambled to the crate, and pulled the boards away
She searched around until she found a photo in a frame.
The glass was cracked, the photo torn, but she could see his face.
And his arm around her shoulders in their younger days.
Then the wind whipped up around her, she pulled her sweater tight.
Sara knew she needed warmth to make it though the night.
She saw a rusty dumpster where she used to look for food,
The only thing the dumpster held were rags and broken wood.
She packed the rags around her, underneath her clothes
And looked about to find a spot to sleep out of the snow.
But the alley didn’t hold a place to lay her tired head,
So Sara walked up to the truck and tried the door instead.
She braced herself and pulled, the truck’s door opened up,
And Sara’s life grew by one night thanks to random luck.
The driver of the truck had quit at noon that day,
And left his lunch behind him in his haste to get away.
A thermos and a lunch box were lying on the floor;
Now Sara had a meal and a place out of the storm.
She gathered up her battered bags and slid onto the seat,
Locked the doors, settled back, and ate the driver’s meal.
Tomorrow he may come back, and then she’d have to leave,
But time for that tomorrow, tonight was Christmas Eve.

If only the life's sidewalks
  Were like people movers
That quicken our pace,
   Soften our steps, and carry
Our baggage for a while.

How great that would be…except

The machine would choose our
   Path unless we got bored and
Decided to carry his own baggage
   And set out on his own.

So I guess a short trip through the
   Airport is okay, but I think I’ll make the
Real journey under my own power.

I almost remember the first steps he took;
I certainly remember his smile and
The light in those little eyes.

I remember watching him run, play tennis.

Basketball.  

There is a very specific memory of
My son walking into school with me his face open
To the new things in front of him, taking it in,
Holding my hand as he started a journey to today
Where he sits with others taking a Bar Exam.

This being the first steps of new journey for him
One I began so long ago

The game was created for us to play
As if we don’t care about the score;
Taking our satisfaction from the moments
We made hard plays look simple
And the simple ones look automatic.

When we fall, and we all fall, we
Take pride in getting up.
When we can’t get up,
Defiance redeems us from our failure.

In the end, we remember the plays
Not the wins and losses, because in the end
We all get carried off the field.