Daddy dear.
You were cold the day I touched your hand, although you were alive.
Colder still the day you died.
Could not kiss your furrowed brow.
The last time that I saw your pallid face.
Chilled entirely by the fateful kiss of death.

Dear Daddy.
Left behind so much unsaid.
In a world, a resting world.
Played like a violin, somewhat out of tune.
Now nothing can atone the missing moments.
You know those ones we rarely shared.

Father dear,
Yes, that you were.
In marriage I was made.
The ultimate move I made.
I touched your hands, clasped in peaceful death.
And I said "sorry".

Into the fire your heart was burned.
Since that  day some thing I learned.
You left me a gift.
The greatest legacy.
Somewhere in my geno-type.
Mapped out my dearest love to write.
You wrote too.
I never knew!
(C) Livvi. 2014

Two hearts, one body,
gliding gracefully over the fences with ease.
Just like the air that wooshes past the pair,
time has flown.
Seven years of trust slowly built up,
It all started with..

A glance in the stables,
and the first invigorating ride
that made her spirits soar. In her head,
she knew Geno was special.

Breathing in the warm sunlight and feeling
his sleek, red coat beneath her fingers,
and smelling the musty, dirt smell of horse stalls,
Trust began to grow, with every successful trek and turn.

Every handful of hay and oats
and his favorite, Peppermints,
and the occassional laugh they shared
carried the threads of the bond they have now sewn tightly together.

The drum of hooves on ground beat a melody to their ears,
encouraging them to go where neither had gone before.
For as long as they have each other, anything feels possible.
With a nudge to his stomach and they're off
galloping across the field, like spreading wildfire.

How extraordinary,
to kindle a friendship with such a magnificent creature...

It is in those moments time feels endless.
When the calm overcomes and all is quiet,
the breath of rider and breath of horse,
the steady and strong shoulders shooting forward,
And the sunlight setting across the hill
is all that matters.

It is in that space, between sky and ground and time
on the back of a lovely beast,
heart racing against the evening's shadows,
that the rider can say:
She's home.

Dear reader,
     This is a long one. Though it was written in 1995,  I’m including it because the inexcusable and inhuman Floyd phenomenon      
demands answers of some kind, human beings seeming to have a need to exclude; itself a discreditable phenomenon.
Have patience and read to the end, please.
Arlene            

             Inclusive/Exclusive
 
I heard them talking.
Back and forth they talked about the universal;
Secular society’s exclusion of the concept evil.
Focusing on genocide, race killing pride.
They harkened back to World War Two,
To Pole, gay, Gypsy, Marxist, Jew –
When one mustachioed-crazed face
Decided to **** off a race that never was a race.

“How does it come about, they asked.
-And how can we prevent it?
There was rabbi, priest from West and East.
“How can we **** the killing beast?
Turn killing to a feast and peace?”
They were erudite all right.  Not right, bur erudite.

One said, “We teach the whelps. Education is what helps.”
One said, “we cannot burn the seed. Punish those that do the deed,
Chase the villains, make them bleed;
Justice must be served and seen.”
The cause was man alone.

But where was God, I heard me groan.
The priest and rabbi, smart but green,
-Oh, God was there, but cause was man.
The cause was man?
How can the cause be man when God is absolut-er than
First cause and seed, the first split second all decreed,
All that stems from filling need.
Plainfully clear, it followed as the night the day
That even murdered masses stay
Within the scope of God’s good meaning.
(from which one ears oneself screaming)
If God is, and still they die,
There’s meaning somewhere in the sky
And meaning must be dying’s seeming,
Any other meaning dreaming.
(Let’s let that specific theory by)

Back to rabbi and to priest:
Back and forth they sought solutions.
I could see a key, a yeast
Which, when expanding, chokes pollutions:
Heres the  final codicil:
                            
Leave the club that says “Exclusive”.
Join the club that says “Inclusive.
It’s not easy not to hate,
Include the ‘yids’,
The blacks, the gays; yourself. the kids.
But it’s a gate.
We are geno-of the-cide.

By taking God on this queer ride - or ethics or morality,
A good way to begin Is make a circle drawing in
Someone whose eye you catch; who happens to fall in your patch;
Who chances near, or seeks your ear;
In short, who forms the batch of living skin.
(Include the wretch you are, as well,)
To make a heaven out of hell,
And feed the world with perfect food,
Tell, yell and ring this perfect bell:
Include, include, incude!!
 
Inclusive/Exclusive 5.23.1995 Definitely Didactic; Our Times, Our Culture; Defiant Doggerel; Arlene Nover Corwin  (revised 6.9.2020)