I think it very sad, don't you?-
That we grow old but  songs never do.
I'm listening to Kim Carnes
sing of Betty Davis eyes
but I can't will myself back
to the Dublin Pub
where I heard it the first time.

We were young and beautiful then.
(Vouch for me, I'll vouch for you)
I hear they've torn the old place down.
That's a **** shame, sad but true

Crouched beneath March winds
Howl the songs of wolves
Against cloud-scudded skies,
Leafless, bending only little,
Insensate, but howling still,
Straining against night winds.

First cold and wind must pass
Before the softness-es of Spring
Coax life from roots below the frost,
Reminding me that nothing's lost.

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.

In a medically induced coma
The patient was divorced from time.
He wandered from room to room
in the chambers of his mind.
Memories of long ago;
things and people he’d left behind,
Competed for his attention
with all his kith and kind.
Ghosts of family, dead and gone,
came face to face at last,
with his children’s children
at a glorious repast.
He bellied up against the bar
with some friends he’d  lost in Nam.
They looked no worse for being dead
For what seemed a very long time.
They raised a glass to memory
and gave a toast to Time.
The barkeep said “its Final Call!”


and his monitor flat lined.

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.

Three decades since he last drew breath-
it came as something of a shock
To find a tape that he had made
Its existence long forgot.

To hear his Irish Brogue again
after  a long  respite.
To hear  the music of his voice
It is my heart's delight.

A simple oral history
we taped in 73'
we did a sort of a "Q and A"
I think he humored me.

Some truths he told
Some truths withheld.
I know with certainty.
Not all will be revealed.

He had the courage to venture out
from the old world to the new.
I love him more than words can say,
but no more than he is due.

His sentence had been pronounced by Nero.
Paulus of Tarsus would die at dawn.
His race would soon be over; he had fought the good fight.
So many souls for Christ he had won.

Peter had been crucified; Paulus, as a Roman,
would not be tortured like a slave;
The executioner would take his head
for his preaching about the Son of Man.

We prayed with Paulus; he was not alone.
We smuggled his last letters out.
His words would stir the pilgrim church on earth.
His Faith  would inspire all those devout.

A good God fearing woman, Lucia,
Promised Paulus that his remains
would not be fodder for the wild dogs.
She would entomb him on the Ostian way.

They came for him then; he showed no fear.
The master had prepared his Heavenly home.
He bared his neck to the axe man’s blade.
His crown was won by Faith alone.