In the end, the little ones
scampering about peppers, vibrant
red and yellows and oranges disappearing
into tiny mouths, behind toddling grins with
Meme and Pepere beaming, a
beautiful sailboat in their minds' eye that
was fortunate enough to lose sight of
the shore long ago

A swingset sits in the yard, starkly vacant, silent.
A chair is stationed only feet away—the watchpost of an anxious pepere.
Only days ago I sat there, watching the child of my old age
Swinging, hanging upside down, proving to me and herself that nothing could scare her.
“Watch me,” she commands, daring the gods to do their worst.
All she needs from me is the occasional tribute to her skill.
All I need from her is to bless me with her being.

She is gone now, and there is no help for it.
An empty swing, a useless chair, and the ache of loss.
The swing haunts me with her voice and I listen to it in my mind.
Dante got it wrong.
It isn’t the dead who abandon hope—
Hell is for the living.

In the night-I want to whisper,
All the things-I meant to say,
Through out the day-and my lifetime,
Do you want to hear-what I wanted to say?

That no that dress doesn't suit you,
No I am not okay,
Why don't you let me choose?
There's so much that I didn't say.

One last goodbye to my pepere,
No-wait I had that chair,
Do you really care?
No-that doesn't sound fair,
Does anybody truly care?

I swallow these words,
They go far down,
Never to return,
Until this night,

When these words unspoken,
Come back up,
They've awoken,
Every single thought that's been caught,

Stuck in my head,
Or at the tip of my tongue,
They flat line-are dead,
Before anyone could see wrong,

That I bite my tongue,
For too many times,
Nobody had heard my truths,
Except for with these rhymes,

It is easier to write-then to speak,
I know speaking is pretty easy,
But my voice is far to weak,
And my thoughts far to messy,

For anybody to truly want to hear,
All that I fear,
All that has been untold,
Of why I sometimes I feel cold,

Theres no reason for others to hear my voice,
So holding my words back aren't really a choice,
For even if they are spoken,
Nobody will actually listen,

Sure-some of my words have no real meaning,
But they speak volumes of what I'm feeling,
Or of what's going on in my head,
But most of those words come out dead;

Born to nothing but air,
No vocal cords vibrated,
My heart thinks it's unfair,
My mind is still not sated,
I guess it might never be,

If I keep bitting my tongue-so much it bleeds,
I will no longer have a tongue to speak,
I'll try to speak the words I find needs,
For even if its not only my voice that's weak.

When I was five or six, maybe four
I with my father to his freinds farm
We went to help with bringing in the hay
The small house with an open door
while rife with old country charm
drew me in on this sunny summers day

Memere inside standing by the table
was looking out at the hay field...
Pepere picking alfalfa and clover
In her hands was vase of marble
Cherished for the treasure it would yeild
Half filled it with water from the river

The door opened and in entered a breeze
presenting an intoxicating scent of flowers
coloured with purples and white
He presented the bouquet with a wheeze
from the pollen that would hang for hours
and glossy eyes on his face so alight

Their hands touched ever so tenderly
as he gave her the flowers of alfalfa and clover
No words needed said of love and devotion
their eyes did meet momentarily
with a "soupson" of admiration for each other
Unchanged since their first introduction

As a boy I did not understand what I witnessed
As an adult when I see or smell alfalfa and clover
I stop to embrace and be infused by their totem
I sense they are walking in a field of mist
where the flowers bloom today, tomorrow and forever
I know that on that day, I had lived in a poem