In our life time
people come and go.
Our children however
come and never go.
Or so it seems.

Grinning wide by the riverside
two bubbly girls click shots
between them whisper confide
share the secret thoughts!

The giggly cutes they walk like dance
caught in a sunlit pause
not mind the boys stealing glance
seems not worth a cause!

Their cells follow where they go
the lens beamed right on face
one more please and then one more
frames add up happiness!

I was watching the sun go down
pretty much in a fix
light was getting dullish brown
would turn darkish by six!

The urge was great surged the will
it grabbed the whole of mind
to have a photo me standing still
with the river flowing behind!

The butterfly girls in the sun's last kiss
they readily said o yes
each of them took a shot apiece
my joy you can easily guess!

Drinking wine by candle light
Small flame that might've
toasted music
Holding off instead
a flood of grief
Some wall I must retain
Some hope I still maintain
called life
...or was it love or...

one of those foolish things....

It's not important now
I am not known for caving-in
complaining
Not one for asking
nor for needing much
to hold my own...

I just need everything--

Boundless days of youth
forever slipping  
Only one dream yet remains

Wash over  
tender tide
The sea has found the breast
Seals it with its mouth
a hunger
lunging toward its home
of earth-warm woman
a deep surround

Longing there to cry
to take her back
to take it out on all
the taking

hurt of it
the bitter
and the knowing
loss of song

I can't recall

...The music that I cannot make
for lack of everything

city lights shut eyes,
silence nets darkened night;
alone, still she waits.

When the arc of his watch hands  
reached the top of the hour
Sam pushed the throttle forward.

Engine 138 thundered
out of Blossburg station
like an iron dragon
breathing smoke and steam -
whistle shrilling over the Tioga valley.

Powered by coal
the train carried coal
to the waiting city of Elmira
where Sam would press his mother's hand -
perhaps for the final time.

The wheels churning iron on iron
across Pennsylvania farmlands,
turned like other wheels before
moving settlers west
to break its ready earth -
wheels beneath his grandfather's oxcart
turning toward Lycoming's verdant hills.

New wheels now carried America
to urban landscapes
drawing us like electro-magnets
to streetlamps - factories - dry good stores -
new crops for a modern age.

Elmira’s silhouette expanded on the horizon.
and Sam pulled the train in on time -
brakes screeching through billowing steam.

His wife, Jenny and his sister's Sam
came in a horseless carriage
with Zoe, Marie and Edward,
children now grown at their sides.

They all gathered by Hannah's bed
now approaching her final hours
soft voices and fragile smiles
cradled the truth beyond all telling:

Time, ever advancing
like the hands of a fine old watch,
holds us all in its circling sway

© 2006 by Robert Charles Howard

I am that fragrant thought, still alive,
as a seed,one of nature's wonder
that sprout in a season not expected,
in your mind in a blue moon night.
Though we loved and lost without
knowing reasons and sans any regret,
We still would be probing for errors,
in the book of accounts love never can keep.

You were left alone for long, yet moved
by love that caressed your heart
with such intensity only once, that
made possible many flights together
with moon beams as wings of fantasy.
But that was before the tsunami hit,
just a memory now,but would last long!

Now, here the magic happens again,
as musky fragrance hovered
in the west wind,stirring passions,
I can't understand the dynamics of this:
somehow a beam of light hit,
my being telling me about,
your plight in a flash and
our hearts melted together,beating
making shrink the distance between us!
We touched each other's heart,felt
love traveling at the  speed of light.
The world suddenly looks a place brighter,
What if we wouldn't meet even once, hereafter.