I do have an ear for music
Most of all music Ive not heard before~
So much of the same old same old
But some I really do adore~
Once on a trip so far aways
I heard music I will not forget~
I stopped right there and listened so
Even though I was soaking wet~
The wind blowing through the tall bamboo
As if they were the tallest tubular bells~
Accompanied by natures most haunting flutes
As they played a natural symphony so well~
A melody Ive never heard before
No way could it all be written down~
The highs and lows and in betweens
Such a beautiful haunting deep jungle sound~
As wind blew the baboos played
Deep with echoe how they sounded~
And every tone as I stood alone
To listen so I was then grounded~
How it all in tune and rhythum
Had that lonely romantic jungle beat~
With vibrational magic spelling sound
I could almost feel it in my feet~
Away up high within the sky
A half cloud blue covered moon~
As it too listened its true
To this most sublime deep jungle tune~
So many different ranges of tones and notes
As if hollow pipes they rang~
This So well practiced perfection recieved all my effection
And the rest of the night jungle how it sang~
I will never forget though I was so wet
The sound I will carry with me~
The most beautiful music that Ive ever heard
This magestic music of natures own symphony~

Terrence Michael Sutton
Copyright 2007

This is a word I've often heard
And it's my way of being so~
In this life with all it's strife
And all the woe I know~
There are millions of answers to our being
That are there for all to see~
But some like to complicate it all
As they can't sell simplicity~
We go to school as children
And each year we we go up a class~
Or if some fail an exam they might
Repeat again it's clear as glass~
Non of us do one class
And then go sit by the deans right hand~
We have to go from class to class
And pass all the tests that are so grand~
So many here take a few facts
And then teach as if they know~
But not knowing they are failing lessons
And a harder way they go~
There are no shortcuts in this school
Our head teacher was not born yesterday~
And we will go from class to class you know
And do it all in our own way~
But all the seemed complicated things
Are in fact so simple to understand~
As the God above the same one we love
Has already placed simple answers in our hands~
He said we were his children
And he explained it all as if we were so~
Simple explanations of it all
This class and where we were to one day go~
He even came back to show us
That there was no end to this life~
That ahead was joy and happiness
To all we see here as so much strife~
Everything is there to know
And if we stop to think it's true~
We are all in a class and doing fine
As all of us must do~
We've got a lot of imagination syndrome
And we worry so we do~
But we are in such good hands
And he will see us through~
Simplicity such a beautiful word
It will take us home~
He was not a complicated soul at all
Simplicity his gift to us and it's all our own~

Terrence Michael Sutton
Copyright 2007

“…the war…often seems to have happened to someone else.”

-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

A pickup truck beside a Navajo road
Tables of souvenirs, a Thermos of coffee
Clotheslines of dreamcatchers catching the sun
For now; the dreams must wait for sleepless hours

“You were in Viet-Nam,” the old man said
To another old man. No mystery;
He simply took a chance to make a sale
And did, for both had known the Vam Co Tay

Old men along the road, catchers of dreams
Who burned their chances in the long ago

I suppose there has to be a reason
or at least a note
to mark that day--

He ate his breakfast
She let him out
He walked along the railing like the plank
defying death for pleasure
of his lady's company
to get his belly rubbed
sprawled long
across her lap

She released him
to chase the squirrels of his dreams
to his black cat adventures
to the aching green of life's
late summer ways

But, the days assemble against your return

May the angels find you quickly
my darling, Bailey
Dark beauty of coal
I was a Tuesday, bereft
You disappeared--
like the shadow of a whisper

Disappeared like hope--
in the last blow of day