I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
  nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the ****** in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

                              but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Whe walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
  no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

    O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and
  deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
  time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

    O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

    O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
  of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

The merchant’s word
Delighted the Master heard;
For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.
A quiet smile played round his lips,
As the eddies and dimples of the tide
Play round the bows of ships,
That steadily at anchor ride.
And with a voice that was full of glee,
He answered, “Erelong we will launch
A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch,
As ever weathered a wintry sea!”
And first with nicest skill and art,
Perfect and finished in every part,
A little model the Master wrought,
Which should be to the larger plan
What the child is to the man,
Its counterpart in miniature;
That with a hand more swift and sure
The greater labor might be brought
To answer to his inward thought.
And as he labored, his mind ran o’er
The various ships that were built of yore,
And above them all, and strangest of all
Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall,
Whose picture was hanging on the wall,
With bows and stern raised high in air,
And balconies hanging here and there,
And signal lanterns and flags afloat,
And eight round towers, like those that frown
From some old castle, looking down
Upon the drawbridge and the moat.
And he said with a smile, “Our ship, I wis,
Shall be of another form than this!”
It was of another form, indeed;
Built for freight, and yet for speed,
A beautiful and gallant craft;
Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast,
Pressing down upon sail and mast,
Might not the sharp bows overwhelm;
Broad in the beam, but sloping aft
With graceful curve and slow degrees,
That she might be docile to the helm,
And that the currents of parted seas,
Closing behind, with mighty force,
Might aid and not impede her course.

In the ship-yard stood the Master,
With the model of the vessel,
That should laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
Covering many a rood of ground,
Lay the timber piled around;
Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak,
And scattered here and there, with these,
The knarred and crooked cedar knees;
Brought from regions far away,
From Pascagoula’s sunny bay,
And the banks of the roaring Roanoke!
Ah! what a wondrous thing it is
To note how many wheels of toil
One thought, one word, can set in motion!
There ’s not a ship that sails the ocean,
But every climate, every soil,
Must bring its tribute, great or small,
And help to build the wooden wall!

The sun was rising o’er the sea,
And long the level shadows lay,
As if they, too, the beams would be
Of some great, airy argosy,
Framed and launched in a single day.
That silent architect, the sun,
Had hewn and laid them every one,
Ere the work of man was yet begun.
Beside the Master, when he spoke,
A youth, against an anchor leaning,
Listened, to catch his slightest meaning.
Only the long waves, as they broke
In ripples on the pebbly beach,
Interrupted the old man’s speech.
Beautiful they were, in sooth,
The old man and the fiery youth!
The old man, in whose busy brain
Many a ship that sailed the main
Was modelled o’er and o’er again;—
The fiery youth, who was to be
The heir of his dexterity,
The heir of his house, and his daughter’s hand,
When he had built and launched from land
What the elder head had planned.

“Thus,” said he, “will we build this ship!
Lay square the blocks upon the slip,
And follow well this plan of mine.
Choose the timbers with greatest care;
Of all that is unsound beware;
For only what is sound and strong
To this vessel shall belong.
Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine
Here together shall combine.
A goodly frame, and a goodly fame,
And the Union be her name!
For the day that gives her to the sea
Shall give my daughter unto thee!”

The Master’s word
Enraptured the young man heard;
And as he turned his face aside,
With a look of joy and a thrill of pride
Standing before
Her father’s door,
He saw the form of his promised bride.
The sun shone on her golden hair,
And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair,
With the breath of morn and the soft sea air.
Like a beauteous barge was she,
Still at rest on the sandy beach,
Just beyond the billow’s reach;
But he
Was the restless, seething, stormy sea!
Ah, how skilful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love’s command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love’s behest
Far excelleth all the rest!

Thus with the rising of the sun
Was the noble task begun,
And soon throughout the ship-yard’s bounds
Were heard the intermingled sounds
Of axes and of mallets, plied
With vigorous arms on every side;
Plied so deftly and so well,
That, ere the shadows of evening fell,
The keel of oak for a noble ship,
Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong,
Was lying ready, and stretched along
The blocks, well placed upon the slip.
Happy, thrice happy, every one
Who sees his labor well begun,
And not perplexed and multiplied,
By idly waiting for time and tide!

And when the hot, long day was o’er,
The young man at the Master’s door
Sat with the maiden calm and still,
And within the porch, a little more
Removed beyond the evening chill,
The father sat, and told them tales
Of wrecks in the great September gales,
Of pirates coasting the Spanish Main,
And ships that never came back again,
The chance and change of a sailor’s life,
Want and plenty, rest and strife,
His roving fancy, like the wind,
That nothing can stay and nothing can bind,
And the magic charm of foreign lands,
With shadows of palms, and shining sands,
Where the tumbling surf,
O’er the coral reefs of Madagascar,
Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar,
As he lies alone and asleep on the turf.
And the trembling maiden held her breath
At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea,
With all its terror and mystery,
The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death,
That divides and yet unites mankind!
And whenever the old man paused, a gleam
From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume
The silent group in the twilight gloom,
And thoughtful faces, as in a dream;
And for a moment one might mark
What had been hidden by the dark,
That the head of the maiden lay at rest,
Tenderly, on the young man’s breast!

Day by day the vessel grew,
With timbers fashioned strong and true,
Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee,
Till, framed with perfect symmetry,
A skeleton ship rose up to view!
And around the bows and along the side
The heavy hammers and mallets plied,
Till after many a week, at length,
Wonderful for form and strength,
Sublime in its enormous bulk,
Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk!
And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing,
Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething
Caldron, that glowed,
And overflowed
With the black tar, heated for the sheathing.
And amid the clamors
Of clattering hammers,
He who listened heard now and then
The song of the Master and his men:—

“Build me straight, O worthy Master,
    Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
    And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”

With oaken brace and copper band,
Lay the rudder on the sand,
That, like a thought, should have control
Over the movement of the whole;
And near it the anchor, whose giant hand
Would reach down and grapple with the land,
And immovable and fast
Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast!
And at the bows an image stood,
By a cunning artist carved in wood,
With robes of white, that far behind
Seemed to be fluttering in the wind.
It was not shaped in a classic mould,
Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old,
Or Naiad rising from the water,
But modelled from the Master’s daughter!
On many a dreary and misty night,
‘T will be seen by the rays of the signal light,
Speeding along through the rain and the dark,
Like a ghost in its snow-white sark,
The pilot of some phantom bark,
Guiding the vessel, in its flight,
By a path none other knows aright!

Behold, at last,
Each tall and tapering mast
Is swung into its place;
Shrouds and stays
Holding it firm and fast!

Long ago,
In the deer-haunted forests of Maine,
When upon mountain and plain
Lay the snow,
They fell,—those lordly pines!
Those grand, majestic pines!
’Mid shouts and cheers
The jaded steers,
Panting beneath the goad,
Dragged down the weary, winding road
Those captive kings so straight and tall,
To be shorn of their streaming hair,
And naked and bare,
To feel the stress and the strain
Of the wind and the reeling main,
Whose roar
Would remind them forevermore
Of their native forests they should not see again.
And everywhere
The slender, graceful spars
Poise aloft in the air,
And at the mast-head,
White, blue, and red,
A flag unrolls the stripes and stars.
Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless,
In foreign harbors shall behold
That flag unrolled,
‘T will be as a friendly hand
Stretched out from his native land,
Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless!

All is finished! and at length
Has come the bridal day
Of beauty and of strength.
To-day the vessel shall be launched!
With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched,
And o’er the bay,
Slowly, in all his splendors dight,
The great sun rises to behold the sight.

The ocean old,
Centuries old,
Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled,
Paces restless to and fro,
Up and down the sands of gold.
His beating heart is not at rest;
And far and wide,
With ceaseless flow,
His beard of snow
Heaves with the heaving of his breast.
He waits impatient for his bride.
There she stands,
With her foot upon the sands,
Decked with flags and streamers gay,
In honor of her marriage day,
Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending,
Round her like a veil descending,
Ready to be
The bride of the gray old sea.

On the deck another bride
Is standing by her lover’s side.
Shadows from the flags and shrouds,
Like the shadows cast by clouds,
Broken by many a sunny fleck,
Fall around them on the deck.

The prayer is said,
The service read,
The joyous bridegroom bows his head;
And in tears the good old Master
Shakes the brown hand of his son,
Kisses his daughter’s glowing cheek
In silence, for he cannot speak,
And ever faster
Down his own the tears begin to run.
The worthy pastor—
The shepherd of that wandering flock,
That has the ocean for its wold,
That has the vessel for its fold,
Leaping ever from rock to rock—
Spake, with accents mild and clear,
Words of warning, words of cheer,
But tedious to the bridegroom’s ear.
He knew the chart
Of the sailor’s heart,
All its pleasures and its griefs,
All its shallows and rocky reefs,
All those secret currents, that flow
With such resistless undertow,
And lift and drift, with terrible force,
The will from its moorings and its course.
Therefore he spake, and thus said he:—

“Like unto ships far off at sea,
Outward or homeward bound, are we.
Before, behind, and all around,
Floats and swings the horizon’s bound,
Seems at its distant rim to rise
And climb the crystal wall of the skies,
And then again to turn and sink,
As if we could slide from its outer brink.
Ah! it is not the sea,
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves
That rock and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of ocean.
Ah! if our souls but poise and swing
Like the compass in its brazen ring,
Ever level and ever true
To the toil and the task we have to do,
We shall sail securely, and safely reach
The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach
The sights we see, and the sounds we hear,
Will be those of joy and not of fear!”

Then the Master,
With a gesture of command,
Waved his hand;
And at the word,
Loud and sudden there was heard,
All around them and below,
The sound of hammers, blow on blow,
Knocking away the shores and spurs.
And see! she stirs!
She starts,—she moves,—she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,
And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean’s arms!

And lo! from the assembled crowd
There rose a shout, prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say,
“Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms!”

How beautiful she is! How fair
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.
Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the ***** of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o’er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
‘T is of the wave and not the rock;
‘T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!

Three sugars. No cream.
Stuck inside a 4 A.M. Dream
And there's nothing I can't do
Is the sky really black or just dark blue?

No cars, no souls save preying police
Their lights burn red and scream, "Freeze!"
And the night obliges
For it is not so mighty

Glass half full, still starving
Clouds overmind work their sky carving
Of all my favorite fluffy animals
Are vampires iron deficient cannibals?

The sun soon breaks like an egg on the edge
And the dream skitters light spiders from my head
Eyes pressed to withered pillow sheathing
Is this morning or deeper evening?

Am I waking from the dreaming
Or am I sleeping next to coffee steaming?

Moonlight, sheathing the earth,
lost its heart to a shining smart satellite,
"moving speck of light, inching forwards infinity,
alas! our love lasts, not even a cosmic minute"

Every night walking to the door
I have gazed upon the heavens
Seen the radiance of the moon
Unless the rock beneath my feet
Has extirpated all its light.

Nine times, over these last nine moons
I resisted the lonely howl
Lest the moon cry out back at me
Lest would it grow arms to embrace
Lest its craters could catch my tears

Nine moons, have I opened the lock
And entered into my repose
Shaking until the morrow dew
Learning to forgive those who wrong
Forgiving myself to move on

Nine rainbows, have passed through my tears
Yet, now, the tenth shall not be mine
Let the river drain to the sea
Let this heart sow up the open ****
And thus become the servant heart.

I accept and digest,

The changes being fed.

A necessary medication,

Essential to the operation.

Sequential,

But not complete.

Heard skipping on repeat.

Temptation lingers slowly,

Beneath the darkness,

The mask.

Sheathing,

Veiling,

Protecting fragile skin.

Because the pain that truly ruptures us,

Ignites from within.

In sin,

In harmony,

In truth.

Cast upon the world at large,

Stand alone.

It’s you.

Lean                                                             ­       
Delicate                                                 ­                                                     
“ne plus ultra”                                      
Cooked slow                              
Gastronomically Intelligent        
Unassuming                                              
Gentle ­                                   
Docile
Fashionable                                  
“ne plus ultra”                                          
Ethical         ­                                         
Ecological ...    
...voices rumbling through refined-dining,

Excuse Moi, Mr.Gluttony

Since when is Meat Ethical?
If meat became so Ethical,
Then,
How Ethical You are?

Sheathing your hypocrisy                
and luck of humanity                                
with pompous words,                      
style and fancy clothes,
while you tingling your gustative papillae
with  “le goût friand”, étiquette,
capris and mannerism.
                                                    
You                                                            ­    

Don’t **** the rabbit! so                                                    
the rabbit can **** you in no time, “pooka”
          
Don’t tell                                                  
No one pre-empt you,                            
when asking for healing.

In a sphere of infinite narcissism



Wicked homosapiens tread the horizon



Daunting threats of turbulent tragedy



Dawn upon the hopeless, roaming souls



Sheathing them with treacherous shadows



Of atrociously, covert crucifixion



The elite coquettes hearken



The tumultous sound



Emanating from multiple, acrid massacres



Tainting these notably wounded hearts



Within a satanic plethora



Of acrimonious equivocation



By nightfall a harrowing suicide



By daybreak a dreary mourning



Catastrophe is all that occupies



This infamous wasteland of avarice



By Glenn McCrary



© 2011 (All rights reserved)

Wendy, Wendy, she gave me a thimble;
She held my world and made it crumble.
The tender orb's icy sheathing starts to melt,
thawed by the enigma's hearth it felt.

The thimble she gave, it dawned upon me;
makes me wonder will she not, or will she be.
Is she the raison d'etre I've long been searching for?
Though one thing's for certain, her thimble, I'm yearning for more.

Her fairness, her beauty, there's more from within.
Surpassing even the cherubic vessel she's in.
Ethereal Perfume, she draws me near;
in the sonorous silence; two hearts twained dear.

She made me, no longer the rougish Peter Pan;
Her thimble transfixed me into a man.
She took me out from Neverland's imbecile bliss;
But for you to see, Wendy's thimble is her secret kiss.

Wither your wings go
Yet, forth you walk
To parting lips, blackened
Breath
Sheathing nervous impulse

Behind roiling haze
You were immortal, once
Gazing without seeing
A glass heart
Full of hope

Life flushed your veins gold
Sunk its teeth
Into warm pulse
Carried two sets
Of two strands
To a place, called home

But fear
Etched its make
Into the hollow of your soul
Creasing aspirations
Careless in their birth
And growth

Lying, in a lull
You flicker through
Replays
Fingers lacing
Soft wake,
Soft skin,
Immeasurable

Having arrived at Patmos, on the southeastern ***** of Skalá, Wonthelimar observed that the Seleucid ships were there. Already knowing of the myth of Seleucus and of his Divinity, since her mother Laodice, according to Vernarth's parapsychology parallel account, and aligned with Wonthelimar, that she had presumed that her son Seleucus had been conceived by carnal union with Apollo. These oracular dreams separated them from Vernarth, for a certain Antigone of the imperial Seleucid with the anchor of the ring that Apollo had captivated from the gematological extract, now wading in the quantum of Chauvet, which had been identified from Gaul.

Wonthelimar says: “from such a thigh such as a Vas Auric you will be anchored at your anchor, in a proud fallacy if you have been engendered by Apollo if it is that your mother temporizes in a hallway idyll or Antigone, and not of someone wearing a ring that smells like broken neo-Hellenic dreams in one that anyone believed, born of one being or another like me from a mythological Iberian, but being carried from a very young age on the haunches of a Bucephalus. Here I believe where Laodice would be or would be caught by knowing that creatures like me, spawned in the darkness of a cave, should wear that ring, but in the seventh ring of the horns of my paternal Ibez with its antlers constantly growing, and in my forehead having one of them in the antlers of the female that fed me in the reign of darkness and in the heights of the mountains. Upon leaving Chauvet I embraced her suspended antlers, and when I separated from the sixth ring, my female nurse with her pale neck offered me the seventh so that I would do it with brown illusions to be like her in the maternal ***** of the Rhone that in altitudes Thousands leveled out over seven hundred meters, with each ring being the power of a reign of darkness filled with light and undeserved talent. In the autumn, my female mother would get involved when I timidly approached from my cavern full of aldehyde, eliminating it through my mouth and eyes, creating from them the brave fear of misunderstood symbols..., if you saw it, your Seleucus...? You would abandon your divinity with a single breeze of the elements when you would recover your anchor rings on the roads. On the other hand, I wake up in his ring because of the meager light that intimidates the converted mountain beings, who interpose me in their combats, if an antler was or is torn from one of my attempts of frustration, after not seeing what it is not noticed even in thousands of distant blushes, and not even in the emission of the eyes of a hypothetical Apollo "

Behind the philastic zoomorphic of the exalting from Seleuco's mouth, the bilocated Epidaurus on Patmos was lowered by the steps of an amphitheater, bossed around in the conclusive closing of his story behind bars or horns that splintered his revoked mention of aspiring to a ring, which is not and will be nothing more than a synonym of despair, more than an immortal that is now abbreviated from the stigma of co-founding itself in meaning as a temporary truth of Hellenism, deducing to qualify its origin as a plus part and ascendant servant, but not descendant in shirts that have to transvestite him on the Epidaurus proscenium. Seleucus began to doubt his converted eagerness to lash out the mythological divine lineage for a sanction, in which the lightning bolts of the stunning sky themselves demystified their annoying gales of submission, by dynasties of the proverbial Kleos for the purposes of fame, and politics that open the loaded winds with cots of gold to marry with diligent nebulosity in transliterated and linked tripods in cumulus universes, where the first two abuse the fulcrum of the obverse that falls by gravity on no man's land..., here is the myth of anchoring and not of to aspire to a ring or earring that will drag us to heights where the icy cold wind crowns you on legs of bronze and not of gold "

These coins were carefully observed by those who observed them from a gorge, capturing the humility and infallibility of a being that came from the entrails of Chauvet, interpreting courses that awaited Seleucus. The appendages were detached from the koilones and tiers that jumped over it, to press and narrow the diazomas or corridors that were already deployed like a laser in the cubations of the consciousness of Megarón and the Vas Auric of the Hexagonal Primogeniture, which already was made ubiquitous. It was released from an Alexandrian Greek fire on the jaws of the hecatomb of the ex-generals of Alexander the Great. Here in funeral periphrasis, few prostitutes rusted behind his inheritance, each with their bronze panoplies and banners in favor of Leonatus in the hands of the Satrap Antigonus, Ptolemy, and the most outstanding applicant of his divine inheritance, Seleucus. They all meet outside the Eurydice ship in Skalá to settle decisions and franchises of ancestry, for the purpose of divinizing the destinies of their tasks and interests, to sink them into the first stone under a base of faith, and of those who will come from the return of the Anastásis like Greek resurrection of bread and wine, Psomí kai krasí…; "The Mashiach for being of whoever and whatever"

Seleuco says: "Psomí kai krasí, Bread and Wine for all." We have revived our leader, who in good time should resurrect us all for his mentions of the new future of fallen leaders and heroes. We are not oblivious to your expiration and perhaps your negligence in Babylon, but the steps of a king require other Seleucid measures and their oriental legitimating, being oligarchies that should morally do what is known. Antigonus, Ptolemy, and I appear here with me, preserving periods that leave us of mediumistic notions of the grim, who does not allow us to close our eyes. We confer the denounced ambiguity of previous riches that do not fit in any silo that can contain it, nor what happens to the secondary after diving early in the morning mounted on your Bucephalus, full of its manes swollen with the posterity of a Roman emperor besieging it, without advancing by requirements or where he rides now in steel wastelands, and not through upholstered steppes of the cautious ensign on your guard and in the solemn light of life that the **** leaves behind in your symbolic sarcophagus! We want you to join us, and to be able to banish our distinctions from where Apollo has given his eternal sleeper in the sense of an ephemeral truth, which makes light of flesh colors in the fiery figure of your coat of arms.
We have stolen the traced areas of Judea and from there Maccabees have donated us inscriptions back to my threat to you and Antigonus,... to my enemy debtor, but even so, I come to repair unevenness and want to repair idylls more remote from the Euphrates to settle in the ranks of Ptolemy. We have all sinned to look for you in our slogans, gaining fleeting territory, but we have lost your lux, already well said in my sanctuary in Didyma, but in seconds that continue from the first, already raising flags and heralds that increase your vox, more than a David that defeats a colossus; that from his own death resurrects...! "

All perceptibly dismayed looked at Alexander the Great who was behind a canopy listening to everything with his ear attached to the canvas that separates him from a presumed truth. He draws the curtain and pounces before everyone with stealth and courtesy, incontinenti he speaks to them after inhuman efforts to move away from the stagnant sub-understanding of his former commander.

Alexander the Great says: “The aureoles of sanctity have dislocated my Beelzebub, and the brambles brush against the Scabious flowers like widows that sing in the cenotic lines of my hands from a purgative cathartic in its graceful subfamily that makes my eyes heterochromatic de facto, between the thistles that are spiced between the aromatherapy of the Scabiosa cretica. In their oblong shape with pincushion flowers, they make the basting their nailed pins waiting to be used so that my desolations are not lost even after being just reborn. After the annual Attic calendar in Elaphebolion where they walked on me to resist the deer of Artemis, in attempts to get up and ***** me in the sessile voices of Scabiosa dispelled by Vernarth that have raised me in the involved species, like a chalice of unstitched shreds in seven holes, leaning back to the Aquenio in his fruit tree that is stained with lavender-blue, and the Lepidoptera bringing Vernarth from Gethsemane and the anti-Sarnic clothing that makes him exalted. Now from here, I harangue you, like immaterial troops that do not move their courage, with enemies that are left open to the fear of my walk on them, on rams of the imminent danger of warbling victory with steely Falangists. What a nationalist Faskéloma attribute as obscene fuss and Pashkien that reorders the armies that invade its headless stadiums, in raised nightingales that chirped the sadness of seeing myself fallen on the nose of the common soldiers and full of scabies in Arbela. I have to fly with you my lost flocks ready of Apollo surrendering twilight fire, and of moon-sun between the legs of a colossus forged by greater fires, speaking to me of Macedonian triumph, under the yoke of the crackle of a people that lies taciturn with the satraps in Hercules's cunning conquering in the cheers only after three laps they made debits from my left, while I saw the light of Uriel coming towards me in the Lepidoptera with his sheathing, and entirely of a horse placed Beelzebub, to transmigrate him with me from Cinnabar chains and honor what serves the world also that dies with me in Thrace or Alexandria Bucephalus, after the south of Corinth, regardless of me, who already sensed that he was anti-diadoco..., being at that time a leader of the Sacred League of Delphic Amphibian, after feeling so much pain immediately from dying..., I still had life left in the Scabiosa flask and in bronze vessels that I removed from the swirling wind of the s Thermopylae, leaving me stranded with nothing but chimeras of winning the world, but losing a Life that had just begun "

Meanwhile, at the dawn of Vas Auric was projected at relative height, Syrmus's light and resounding fall were shown when he attacked the back of Macedonia -... here Alexander makes a gesture of modest resilient power... -, after he glimpsed to Saint John the Apostle how he moved with his staff the tricolor clouds transmitted by the troops of the Tribalios and that was crushed by the carnal battery of Macedonian cavalry that immolated them before their knowledge, and then after their three thousand victims..., which according to some outstanding Hypaspists also rushed them far beyond the Danube where they were engulfed in the confinement of the Getas in thousands, and in greater proportion but with leather rafts, the Hellenic troops crossed this same river and with a few thousand they conquered them filling their saddlebags..., not gold... !, but brandy that burned all the pastures where no Bucephalus crossed by fire.

Off the shoulder of Orion onto the arm of Perseus / in sentient skin sheathing the tingle of nerves / a mortal hunger for a view of the galaxy broader than the Milky Way / an awakened pulse in a soulless being / stronger, brighter, speedier, warrior / yet now, wiser / lover / beloved / thirsting for life / unafraid of who he is / never hidden in the arrow flailing off the arm of the Archer / a philosophical spiraling through a riot of 200 billion stars / looking inwards to what he may become //
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It was the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) who described authenticity as choosing the nature of one’s existence and identity. He linked the concept of authenticity to an awareness of our mortality, positing that only in keeping in view the inevitability of death can one lead a truly authentic life.

Heidegger, Sartre and Camus among others have all discussed and debated the idea of authenticity, free will, freedom of action being a path to self realization etc. I enjoy the thoughts of these erudite thinkers and it brought to mind the most moving death speech ever recorded in cinematic history, that of the replicant Roy Batty from Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ (1982). It is supremely poetic and for a replicant who tried in the course of the film, to find the meaning of his life and a way to increase his lifespan, it is filled with reflection in an awareness of an authentic self and a regret in his imminent mortality. The 42 word monologue what Rutger Hauer (who plays Roy) delivered after he had his way with the original version.

Tears in the Rain

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die’.

I have enjoyed the idea of the search for a meaning of life by AI that lack human consciousness. It’s a beautiful riveting moment in the film where the empathy one feels for someone striving to be human is much more than one would feel for detective Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford), who projects himself throughout the movie as less human and more of a replicant. What is authenticity? For an observer, it would be Roy Batty’s deathbed regret of not having lived to the potential he assumed he had if his lifespan were extended. It is the pain of losing his lover in the course of the film, the opportunity and the ability to show compassion to an assassin like Deckard, the hope of learning to be sentient, an escape from slavery of AI. This movie is quite a treat for the understated screenplay, the poignant moments, the inherent philosophical questions that arise. This poem is my tribute to Roy Batty who I believe, appears more human than a human would strive to be.

Forgive me if I seemed brusque at the airport,

these churches to farewell

are not where I choose to worship

and saying goodbye is like sheathing a sword,

the danger is not over until it’s out of sight.


You’re an introspective man, covert with your passion,

but I suspect you were as glad to see us

as we were to see you.

It’s been said that you are a perfect foil

to my extroversion,

we are a sort of Laurel and Hardy of the emotional spectrum.


One of the perils of transience

is the absence of solid friendship

so that we sometimes become

like wings without a body.

Having a friend arrive on our doorstep

is to find something we did not realise

we had lost.


A holidaymaker is as bright in the workaday world

as a mint coin on sunlit concrete

so that our biggest concern

was to polish your days

to the consistency of your previous excitement.

We are rusty entertainers at best.


One of life’s more pleasant surprises

is that we never know how or where

we will forge a friendship.

Friendships forged in the workplace

can be the most enduring

because there is no mandate to like our workmates.


For a few, too short days

you brought back for me all that was good

about my life in Auckland

and I can ask a friend for no greater gift

than to reflect a little sunlight.

Unto the maw of Oblivion, I dare to stand!
All alone without the company of man;
So as my madness drives me deeper within,
Doing so without a look back and by the guide of my hand.

Stabbing through a peerless darkness swallowing even the slightest of light,
Engulfing all around me, nothing surfaces to my sight.

Deep into this jungle where groans accompany screams,
I struggle to open my eyes in a desperate effort to see.
As I had feared, they are already open as wide as can be.

And so in this grave truth, I set out unto this hopeless mystery
With my hand before me and my other behind me.
I walk among the shadows surrounding me.
Touching and breathing all the smells this cavern seethes;
Upon every sulfurous whim and every inhale I dare to take,
Deep within my throat, I often hesitate.
To taste what I breathe, and with the most restraint, I try
Keep myself from vomiting all over the place.

Not that the smells I would contribute would be anything new
For all I have smelled foul, disturbing, and putrid, but none compare to these…
These scents forbidding me to travel any further.

Sheathing my mouth and nose with utmost haste
And doing so in an effort to never again taste these vile scents
Which have trespassed upon my tongue.

Into my body, heart and lungs.
The once mere groans slowly grow
Into weeping howls echoing to and fro

What was once soft cries,
Now becoming louder with each step I take…
I try to move, I try to muster the strength to put my left foot forward.
But the fear slowly grips me
As I try to step forth, all I feel is a consuming agony.

From the muscles of my feet to my mouth,
I collapse upon these stairs and descend into shadow.
Tumbling and smacking each violent step;
Much too often I can feel a new limb snap.

I had barely made my fall into the Maw of Oblivion
Only to open my eyes to see the world I’ve fallen into.
A beastly dog cloaked in rough ebony fur stands from within.
Fur thick as steel, glistering, and erupting the loudest bark I’ve ever heard.
Eyes, nothing less than ghostly moons,
And sprouting three heads I’m sure others would claim absurd.

Three heads with each possessing their own set of haunting eyes,
Glaring upon me as crescent moons that have once lit the night.

Doing so with such a deathly gaze unto my paralyzed stare,
Each snarl and bark given by a different beastly mouth,
Erupting the smells I had previously smelled so foul.

As fear itself slowly cripples my heart;
Each heavy foot step this beast takes,
From every step, the world surrounding me violently quakes.

Larger than any sort of monster I’ve ever seen.
With every blink, the beast trespasses closer unto me.
With my eyes locked by fear,
I close them in desperation and pray what I’ve seen isn’t truly there.

And as the thundering foot steps come closer,
And every muscle begins to tremble,
From the shuttering sounds and smells,
Corrupting every thought as I accept I’ve foolishly descended into Hell.

An enormous gob of slobber descends upon my leg,
Only clarifying I’ve bought a one way ticket unto my grave.
So warm and diluting what ever hope I might have,
In this second which seems forever, I open my eyes.

To see the ghastly dog standing with each of its heads at each of my sides,
One before me, and two more on each side of me.
No where to go.
No where to run.

I plead a prayer unto my God.
“In these jungles of hell where I’ve made my fall. Please remove this dog. From my sight and from my presence. Do so with no hesitance.  Forgive me for a life time of sin. I beg for your forgiveness for I am just a feeble man.  Of the shores of Italy, will you not take pity upon me? For I was born a sinner and I have sinned.”
And so as my prayer had concluded,
The beastly spoke in a never before heard hymn

“Forgiveness, a tool of the weak!” The center head spoke unto me.
“Can’t you see, you’re a fool to beg, a fool…” The left said unto me.
“Did you expect heaven as a result of your blasphemy? To beg for forgiveness before your death means nothing!  You’ve had a lifetime to change, and change you did NOT!” The right roared into my ear.

“Beg for your savior mortal for none can save you now!” The center howled unto me.
“For you WILL NEVER ESCAPE THE BOWELS OF HELL!” They all cataclysmically roar unto me.

As the roof began to rumble and this ghoulish dog gripped me within its fangs.
It did so instructing the most ferocious pain.
I arise in shock as each head has a different limb of me.
In one furious tug, it rips my skin in all directions,
Severing me limb from limb.

And chuckling as my torso and single remaining leg clash upon the ground
Enforcing a heavy THUD sound.
In this pool of my own blood,
I look to the cavernous ceiling above.
No hope or light shine through.

Only the emptiness of the dog’s mouth beheld by a gate of enormous teeth,
Clamping around my neck as I lose sight of all I had once seen.

Should grief be drowned in waving thrones of sea
bereft as me; shall boat and venture deep
until that ever spanning moat has me
then salty hearse's cleanse - that I not weep.

If seagulls flock the sky above this scene
then fly them lower here and feast debris
for little worth has lovers' break - that been
as sheathing sinks, the fishes then agree.

No shrine would rise beneath the liquid tomb
the ocean bed shall crest my seams as shells
tho' here no flag nor plankton mark old bloom
concealed in sand, from shores and tiding swells.

The bay entices me, whom sprayed with brine
but I shall wander on; in shards of mine.

I wrapped my hands up in your hair
to feel the pulse - your heat, your beat.
I reach again
feel naught but air:
the essence of a love,
retreat.

Often do I venture back,
roam into an abandoned past.
Dis-embalm these memories true,
packed on ice
yet damp with dew.

Cat treads heavy the surface of heart,
imprints
      indenting,
              g,         d
            n             e
           i                 s
         d                   c
        n                      e
       e                         n
     c                             d
   s                                i
a                                   n
                                       g,
scarring my thoughts, my rhythm,
my whole.
Shifting my sacrum,
sheathing my soul.

Doggedly I trail behind
with a twisted eraser
      just "try the eraser"
      you said with a smirk.
But still I reach and I reach and I reach
rapt in your attentions as a wave to a beach.

There is a grain of sand in my eye
that can't be washed away.
Salt, fresh, spring
they all caught her.
But I've tried every type of water.

Still you persist,
a rotting orange's mist.

I allowed you to come; I also let you leave.
I remember with crude clarity
what happened in between.

Go, my love you let.
Go, your love I let.
The only question now I have:
Why then can't I forget?

Don't hate the Playa,
hate the game.
But do you believe in a brave
new Gaming World?

A Halo sheen,
sheathing ancient veins,
pulsating, and spurting
forth the same old sins to love,
while we saunter and strut,
pointing at taunted sinners to hate.

It's hard loving Playas,
cuz they smells, and cuss like a *******.
Dumb ***** singing
beautiful Indri morning
wake up gospels from an old extant
lemur memory trace.

maybe i'll go
                     go all hard and wiggly
when the bread of earth is suffocated
perfectly the surly bending twig,
my follicle of sheathing mortar
     and you.ll be soundly
quiet too
and you,ll love me more than god
and maybe
                     together
our softs will blunder
irrevocably against the sun
who's on our in's
our outs
                 and stapled on the supple
tweed of grass and laughter
(our fingers in the earth
  the righteous
     who think with hearts
       of copper vermilion hush
         ) i'
ll                 call you heaven
                and you;ll just
      just
                  just
                               just
              just
  just                                       just
                 just
                              just



          just









                 t       s                               u                                          j

luscious corpse meadow salvation
wet waxy journal scrawled generous

be straight narrow crooked armor amour
fractured ferrous magnetic skin
dry husk sheathing thee: she spun metallic

so, yes, i will



                       but just this








                                                                                                                          once

White, in visual sense is the purest hue of them all.
However, white also provokes monotony.
If the sky was nothing but clouds,
Anyone with an artistic perspective would go insane.
For our whole world is an empty opus,
and we can’t fill it without destroying the atmosphere in which we live in.
But our conforming society does that now.
The blue acts as a sheath from the already existing,
continually spreading damage.
But there’s beauty in small portions of destruction,
And we tend to over dose quite a bit.  
There’s always comfort in the grey clouds of a boisterous front.
We shed flowers of their pedals,
So we can be reminded that even the most beautiful pieces of nature,
Can be reduced to nothing.
We destroy each other,
With love.
Not because it’s healthy,
But we feel as if it’s a necessity,
That although the same stories have been told
Over, and over,
We are willing to reread them,
Hoping that one-day we can defeat the writer,
And have our own endings.
Visually, we don’t want to see white,
because humans cannot stay pure for long.
But in terms of words,
all we crave is white,
Except so many people spew black
and everything is so easily mixed together,
it’s hard to depict between the two,
and before you know it,
words you thought were white,
pure,
are burned to a crisp
without you even lighting the match.
The grey is no longer comforting.
You could never light a match,
and still receive the second-hand smoke.
It seems that the strikers forget,
Not all have stooped to their level of greed,
pity,
and have kept the matchbox closed.
Then there’s the artificial,
callous,
Speech of sky blue.
The same blue that sheaths our polluted sky,
is sheathing our polluted minds.
Some are too cowardly to face the white,
and must sheath it with plastic blue.
The worst part of it all:
the strikers only make the plastic stronger.

(Man  Lady Plain- Both of them or the narrator)

The powdery snow, slowly sways down,
Sheathing the mountains in soft, pure white.
The two inside a run-down house in a barren village,
Huddle together in the cold winter night.

"It has also been snowing on the day we met,"
You murmured with a smile,
And I'd hidden my face, flushed from each cheek,
Within the shadow of your large sleeve.

With a breath of joy,
I sang a spring's arrival along with the chirping birds.
"Your voice is beautiful," you told me,
Just those words, and those alone, made me so happy!

"If someday, I no longer had this beautiful voice,
Would you still, even then, love me?"
"Of course," you said, softly smiling,
As your large hand, gently stroked my cheek.

"A crane... snared in this weather?
Wait I will set you free"
And it flew ever so elegantly.

One hot summer afternoon,
You coughed blood and collapsed...
Our poor married life,
Couldn't afford it's cure...

The next day came by, along with the following,
I did nothing else, but purposely weave...
I wouldn't let your life,
Fall like the fleeting autumn leaves!

The seasons flow by,
And the bell crickets shriek.
The end of summer is marked by their cries.

"Your fingers are beautiful," you told me,
Delicately clutching my wound-covered hands...
But yours were much too cold!

"If someday, I no longer had these beautiful fingers,
Would you still, even then, love me?"
"Of course," you said, coughing,
As your large hands caressed my aching fingers.

Day and night, don't stop weaving...
~~Ah, the sunset's cool breeze~~
Hurry,hurry, I need to buy medicine...
~~Sways the sluggishly decaying fruit's scent~~
Just a bit more, only a bit more; before the autumn leaves fall...
~~Until it goes out~~
Until these fingers can't move... Until these feathers are all used up!!!

"If someday, I were no longer a human,
Would you still love me?"
The truth I feared left untold,
I softly pluck the final feather alone...

"Of course," I say, warmly smiling,
I promised I'd embrace you, even if you've lost your wings!
And that crane which had beautifully taken flight that day...
I've always remembered, and never forgotten, even now!

And just like always, I love you

Why are you so concerned of these little things
They dont amount to anything
They are nothings
But you see them as your everythings
Its just things
Your thoughts become something
I want to rip off like clothing
But you stand there seething

Quick paced breathing
Acting like its sheathing
The words you are mouthing
But i know you are wreathing
You say nothing
I try to be soothing
My love once unswathing
Replaced now with loathing

My heart cut by your scything
Just say anything
Dont leave me sleuthing
Questioning your worthing
Your silence bites like you're teething
Your intentions sit froathing
You toy with me like a plaything
I am something

Whats left unearthing
When i assume it will be scathing
Leaving me sunbathing
In your seething
Of your nothings
Which became your everything
And am I anything?
Just a little thing.

The memories of raven black obsidian
Well up at the sight of my new blade.
A midnight blade, with a red groove,
Running it’s own comet like streak
Down the center of the curvature.
The handle is made of an ebony wood,
A wood as dark, if not darker than
The blade it so reliably holds together.
A thin silver band wraps the division
Between the blade and handle,
And blocks the sheath from over-sheathing.
The sheath is also made of the same
Shadowy wood as the handle,
Giving off an aura of pure functionality.

This was a weapon made purely to ****.
The air around the blade shadily undulates
Like heartbeats through crimson arteries,
Telling me it’s immense bloodlust.

Each a different sea,
a sea nonetheless.

The one on your side has a warm embrace.
Mine wraps me up in a cold breeze whispering defeat.

Your beach holds sand to ****** your feet into,
leaving a lasting impression of your skin against its grains.
Mine is a bed of rocks.
Which shoot up cold shivers against my spine that no longer tell lies.

Your bed is soft, lace-wrapped,
skin peaking through.
Mine are cold sheets,
tie me down against an empty mattress.

One solace is firewater that promises softer sleep,
a diluted reality,
and memories miles away.

Long fingers,
cold skin.
Daydreaming of sheathing your sword in my warm ribs.
Rough night, sweat drenched with teeth awaiting a taste.

Bubble-wrapped I wonder if there is a chance.
Tiptoe and steal one last piece of vivaciousness.
Breathe in, smell relief.

Out on the fringes of a difficult life,
she's hiding from darkness,
& sheathing a knife,
she plays us along,
with a lonely old fife,
through the years an years of unspeakable strife,
she walks on alone,
a long searching wife,

She's a bit different,
from the accepted,
of  the current "social norm"
a strong & bending tree,
in a devastating storm,
she will never ever break,
& no,
she'll not conform,

She waits for days of nice & long in sunny warm,
though she's not been the one that you,
can truly ever warn,
& it's been this way since long before that girl was born,

Her hands outstretched,
she's waiting for the gifts to come to her,
as locust's come again to swarm,
down she is digging,
she's digging up this very special corm,

An ancient vow to which she's secretly been sworn,
in secrecy she takes the pain,
a native crown she that she'll still adorn,
as they are pushing very deep,
& old and hateful piercing thorn,

She falls down on her knees again,
in every death to cry and mourn,
she raises empty hopeful hands,
till again she hears that gypsy horn,

She rides & yips,
though she's hard outside,
her sleeve of hearts is always worn,
in these days of pain
and endless rain,

She cries her yips,
she still always feels the scorn,
she's been apart,
because that heart's been ripped & torn,
she's just like a sheep who's wools been shorn,

That truth,
her truth,
it is her own,
bend don't break,
is what she's shown,
be so strong,
a true & sturdy bone,

Just like her Dad,
even when times are pretty bad,
it's the only way she's ever,
really known,

As she leans in with a hungry groan,
you never hear her whine & moan,
she knows she'll never walk alone,
her body here is on a loan,

Some skills for her she's yet to hone,
on heady winds again she's blown,
never broken,
again she's flown,
in an ancient plight again she's thrown,

Like every tiny seed she's ever sown,
when she's dead then she'll lie prone,
she will only bow,
before a worthy throne,
a marker for her death,
a lovely granite Bethel stone,

Just look above a starry dome,
shining bright a distant chrome,
nomadic feet will always roam,
she waits again in twilight gloam,
with praying hands she hears the ohm,

Peace out there somewhere,
a  love strong home,
setting roots in her earthy loam,

Where she can be so high and deep,
but the cost to her is very steep,
a hope again the lost can reap,
say you must just take a leap,
but even when she tries to sleep,
pray her soul that you will keep,
she'll never ever say a peep,
when enemies come so near and creep,
scaring her,
they think she weep,

"But I am wolf,
and not just sheep"

Can't lay the dead in empty heap,
inject a vein then let it seep,

Tell her no and give her fuel,
so stubborn like a foolish mule,
her heart is like a precious jewel,
and ready for a worthy duel,

Howling out at a brilliant waning moon,
& snarling with her sharpened ugly teeth,
bays what you sow, so you shall reap,
she still stands firm in her belief,

She'll go the way that she knows is right,
to direct you in a distant fight,
a leader bringing in a little light,
hearing all a poet's plight,
as her heart it just...takes off,
IGNIGHTS
off again
another fateful flight,
dreaming off again in night,
blinded by the stars her sight,
is
g o n e....
again,

I know that she will find a way,
her heart will never really stray,
late at night,
with her to lay,
to be with her when come what may,

It ain't a game she wants to  play,
when skies ahead are scary grey,
down any kind of which of way,
listen close her lonely bay,

She's got your ever loyal back,
from an angry hungry new attack,
you prepared for her a lovely snack,
keeps 'em off as the angry hack,
angry for what they seem to lack,
nightly reading,
still slipping through the daily cracks,
wonder who's picking up the extra slack,
but some think maybe she's a silly quack,
but don't you give her any flack,

Do you even hear me jack?

Nothing is just white or black,
to be a part a truly faithful pack,
a way to always keep on a steady track,

When things sometimes are in a confusing murky haze,
like living in a dreamy daze,
a wild wonderland of crazy craze,
just look into her careful looking gaze,
a busted potters shiny glaze,
your heart will gladly set ablaze,
on blood & bones again she'll graze,

It maybe just another phase,
I hope that we can change our ways,
so the ones ahead of us
are yet to be,
the BEST of all our earthly days,

So please live your life from a place of gratitude. *** - VERMONT

Cherie Nolan © 2016

Looking at the waxing moon,

I hum softly one of our favorites.

Blowing smoke rings,

You  look up at the starry night;

Counting stars and trying to figure out constellations.



‘It's an Orion’ you say,

Breaking the silence of the night.

I look away, skipping stones into the brook.

As the fog settles over,

Your Orion disappears beneath.



Distracted, you pick up your stranded ukulele

Adjusting the broken strings, you sing

“Apki nazron ne samjha;

Pyar ke kabil mujhe”

I chuckle at the parody.



Writhing in trauma,

I resent your poignant emotions.

Even after years of distress, you thought

You had me cold.



I shudder, brushing my vulnerability away.

Embracing the empty fog.

You lie down on the grass.

Sheathing myself from the toxicity around,

I leave.

I woke up with some ticklish kisses in my toes
It was the sea greeting 'good morning'
The tiny grain of crystals were all over my sheathing
I've always thought that these specks were all alive. I felt it
it's heart skipped a beat
As I stood up, there was another welcoming
The heartbeat stopped though.
That's when I thought, it was mine.
The scorching heat burned my uncovered flesh
I waited no more and dwell into the vast and deepest part
I ran and never looked back
"It's calling me." I beckoned
There I go, caressing those ticklish kisses
it desired for more
Now I let the blue devour my whole
At first it was needy.
But the farther we get to be one, the calmer it becomes.
There I was.
Laying in the bed of natural actuation
No more covering.
Just a salty meat and a messy female psyche.

Like the light that guides your way
I will protect you and keep you safe
Sheathing your feet from hurting stones
As long as there's breath in me
Till the last mile of the way

Like the star in your darkest night
I will be there in the saddest days
Brightening up your face again
As long as there's a trace of distress
Till the darkness gives way to light

Like the shadow in the nights
I will be with you forever and for always
Staying by your side as the clock ticks
As long as you keep me
Till the last day of eternity

It was 1972 and my dad was sick.  Well maybe not sick in the usual sense of the word, but his hip was.  He was in Boston, it was mid-winter, and he was an orthopedic patient in the Robert Bent Brigham Hospital.

He had been selected as an early recipient of what was called back then a ‘partial hip replacement.’  It was called partial, because they only replaced the arthritic hip ball, leaving the original (and degenerative) socket in place.  Needless to say these procedures didn’t work long term, but for those unable to walk and in pain, they were all that was available at the time.

I was in State College Pennsylvania when the call came in from my mother, telling me my dad was in the hospital. He was in so much pain they had to rush him to Boston by ambulance and schedule surgery just two days from now. I was living in the small rural town of Houserville Pa. about five miles West of State College and there was at least eight inches of fresh snow on the ground outside. It was 439 miles from State College to Boston. Based on my mothers phone call, if I wanted to see my Dad before his surgery, I had less than a full day to get there.

It was now 5:30 p.m. on Monday night and my father’s operation was scheduled for first thing (7:00 a.m.) Wednesday morning.  That meant that if I wanted to see him before he went to the O.R., I really needed to get there sometime before visiting hours were over Tuesday night.  My mother had said they were going to take him to pre-op at 6:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, and we wouldn’t have a chance to see him before he went down.

My only mode of transportation sat covered outside in the snow on my small front porch.  It was a six-month old 1971 750 Honda Motorcycle that I had bought new the previous September.  Because of the snowy winter conditions in the Nittany Mountains, I hadn’t ridden it since late November.  I hadn’t even tried to start it since the day before Christmas Eve when I moved it off the stone driveway and rode it up under our semi-enclosed front porch.

My roommate Steve and I lived in a converted garage that was owned by a Penn State University professor and his wife.  They lived in the big house next door and had built this garage when they were graduate students over twenty years ago. They had lived upstairs where our bedrooms now were, while storing their old 1947 Studebaker Sedan in the garage below.  It wasn’t until 1963 that they built the big house and moved out of the garage before putting it up for rent.

The ‘garage’ had no insulation, leaked like a sieve, and was heated with a cast iron stove that we kept running with anything we could find to throw in it.  We had run out of our winter ‘allotment’ of coal last week, and neither of us could afford to buy more.  We had spent the last two days scavenging down by the creek and bringing back old dead (and wet) wood to try and keep from freezing, and to keep the pipes inside from freezing too.

After hanging up the phone, I explained to Steve what my mother had just told me. He said: You need to get to Boston, and you need to leave now.  Steve had a 1965 Dodge Dart with a slant six motor that was sitting outside on the left side of the stone drive.  He said “you’re welcome to take it, but I think the alternator is shot.  Even if we get it jump-started, I don’t think it will make it more than ten or fifteen miles.”

It was then that we weighed my other options.  I could hitchhike, but with the distance and weather, it was very ‘iffy’ that I would get there on time.  I could take the Greyhound (Bus), but the next one didn’t leave until 3:00 tomorrow afternoon.  It wouldn’t arrive in Boston until 11:20 at night.  Too late to see my dad!

We both stared for a long time at the Motorcycle. It looked so peaceful sitting there under its grey and black cover.  Without saying a word to each other we grabbed both ends of the cover and lifted it off the bike.  I then walked down the drive to the road to check the surface for ice and snow.  It had snow on both sides but had been recently plowed. There was a small **** of snow still down the middle, but the surface to both sides looked clear and almost snow free.

      I Knew That Almost Was Never Quite Good Enough

I walked back inside the house and saw Steve sitting there with an empty ‘Maxwell House Tin’ in his hands. This is where Steve kept his cash hidden, and he took out what was in there and handed it all to me. “ You can pay me back next week when you get paid by Paul Bunyan.”  Paul Bunyan was the Pizza Shop on ****** Avenue that I delivered for at night, and I was due to be paid again in just four more days. I thanked Steve and walked up the ten old wooden and rickety stairs to our bedrooms.  

The walls were still finished in rough plywood sheathing that had never been painted or otherwise finished.  I packed the one leather bag that my Mother had given me for Christmas last year, put on my Sears long underwear, threw in my Dopp Kit and headed back downstairs. I also said a silent prayer for having friends … really good friends.

                 When I Got Downstairs, Steve Was Gone

Sensing I might need a ‘moment’ to finally decide, Steve had
started to walk down to highway # 64 and then hitchhike into town.  He was the photo-editor of the Penn State Yearbook, and Monday nights were when they had their meetings to get the book out.  The staff had only ninety more days to finish what looked to me to be an almost ‘impossible’ task.

As tough as his project was, tonight I was facing a likely impossible assignment of my own. Interstate #80 had just opened, and it offered an alternative to the old local road, Rt # 322.  The entrance to Rt. # 80 was ten miles away in Bellefonte Pennsylvania, and I knew those first ten miles could possibly be the worst of the trip.  I called my sister at home, and she said the weather forecast had said snow in the mountains (where I was), and then cold temperatures throughout the rest of the Northeast corridor.  Cold temperatures would mean a high of no more than 38 degrees all through the Pocono’s and across the Delaware Water Gap into New Jersey. Then low forty-degree temperatures the rest of the way.

I put two pairs of Levi’s Jeans on over my long-johns. I then put on my Frye boots with three pairs of socks, pulled my warmest fisherman’s knit wool sweater over my head and finished with my vintage World War Two leather bomber jacket to brace against the cold.  I had an early version of a full coverage helmet, a Bell Star, to protect my head and ears.  Without that helmet to keep out the cold, I knew I wouldn’t have had any chance of making the seven and a half hour ride.  To finish, I had a lightly tanned pair of deerskin leather gloves with gauntlets that went half way up my forearms. Normally this would have been ‘overkill’ for a ride to school or into town,

                                   But Not Tonight

I strapped my leather bag on the chrome luggage rack on the rear, threw my leg over the seat, and put the key into the ignition.  This was the first ‘electric start’ motorcycle I had ever owned, and I said a quick prayer to St Christopher that it would start. As I turned the key I couldn’t help but think about my father lying there in that hospital bed over four hundred miles away.  As I turned the key to the right, I heard the bike crank over four times and then fire to life as if I had just ridden it the day before.  As much as I wanted to be with my dad, I would be less than truthful if I didn’t confess that somewhere deep inside me, I was secretly hoping that the bike wouldn’t start.

I was an experienced motorcyclist and now 23 years old. I had ridden since I was sixteen and knew that there were a few ‘inviolable’ rules that all riders shared.  Rule number one was never ride after drinking.  Rule number two was never ride on a night like tonight — a night when visibility was awful and the road surface in many places might be worse. I again thought of my father as I backed the bike off the porch, turned it around to face the side street we lived on, dropped it into first gear, and left.  I could hear Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ playing from the house across the street.  It was rented to students too, and the window over the kitchen was open wide — even on a night like this.

                  Oh, Those Carefree Days Of College Bliss

As I traveled down the mile long side street that we lived on, I saw the sign for state road #64 on my right.  It was less than 100 feet away and just visible in the cloudy mountain air.  I was now praying not for things to get better, but please God, don’t let them get any worse.  As I made the left turn onto #64 I saw the sign ‘Interstate 80 – Ten Miles,’ and by now I was in third gear and going about twenty five miles an hour.  In the conditions I was riding in on this Monday night, it felt like at least double that.

I had only ever been East on Rt #80 once before, always preferring the scenery and twisty curves of Rt #322.  Tonight, challenging roads and distracting scenery were the last thing that I wanted.  I was hoping for only one thing, and that was that PennDot, (The Pennsylvania Department Of Transportation), had done their job plowing the Interstate and that the 150 mile stretch of road from Bellefonte to the Delaware Water Gap was open and clear.  

As I approached the entrance ramp to Rt #80 East in Bellefonte, it was so far; so good.  If God does protect both drunks and fools, I was willing to be considered worse than both tonight, if he would get me safely to Boston without a crash.

The first twenty miles east on Interstate #80 were like a blur wrapped inside a time warp.  It was the worst combination
of deteriorating road conditions, glare from oncoming headlights, and spray and salt that was being kicked up from the vehicles in front of me.  Then it got worse — It started to snow again!

                                             More Snow!

What else could happen now I wondered to myself as I passed the exit for Milton on Rt #80.  It had been two hours since leaving the State College area, and at this pace I wouldn’t get to Boston until five or six in the morning. I was tucked in behind a large ‘Jones Motor Freight Peterbilt,’ and we were making steady but slow progress at about thirty miles per hour.  I stayed just far enough behind the truck so that the spray from his back tires wouldn’t hit me straight on.  It did however keep the road directly in front of me covered with a fresh and newly deposited sheet of snow, compliments of his eight rear wheels which were throwing snow in every direction, but mostly straight back at me.

I didn’t have to use the brakes in this situation, which was a real plus as far as stability and traction were concerned.  We made it almost to the Berwick exit when I noticed something strange.  Motorists coming from the other direction were rolling their windows down and shouting something at the drivers going my way.  With my helmet on, and the noise from the truck in front of me drowning everything else out, I couldn’t make out what they were trying to say.  I could tell they were serious though, by the way they leaned out their windows and shouted up at the driver in the truck I was following.

Then I saw it.  Up ahead in the distance it looked like a parade was happening in the middle of the highway. There were multi-colored flashing lights everywhere.  Traffic started to slow down until it was at a crawl, and then finally stopped.  A state police car came up the apron going the wrong way on our side and told everyone in our long line that a semi-truck had ‘jack-knifed’, and flipped over on its side, and it was now totally blocking the East bound lanes.  

The exit for Berwick was only two hundred yards ahead, and if you got over onto the apron you could make it off the highway.  Off the highway to what I wondered, but I knew I couldn’t sit out here in the cold and snow with my engine idling. It would eventually overheat (being air-cooled) even at these low temperatures which could cause mechanical problems that I’d never get fixed in time to see my dad.

I pulled over onto the apron and rode slowly up the high ramp to the right, and followed the sign at the top to Berwick.  The access road off the ramp was much worse than the highway had been, and I slipped and slid all the way into town.  I took one last look back at the menagerie of lights from the medivac ambulances and tow trucks that were now all over the scene below.  The lights were all red and blue and gold, and in a strange twisted and beautiful way, it reminded me of the ride to church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

                  Christmas Eve With My Mom And My Dad

In Berwick, the only thing I saw that was open was the Bulldog Lounge.  It was on the same side of the street that I was on and had a big VFW sign hanging under its front window.  I could see warm lights glowing inside and music was drifting through the brick façade and out onto the sidewalk. I stopped in front of the rural Pennsylvania tavern and parked the bike on its kickstand, unhooked my leather bag from the luggage carrier and walked in the front door.

Once inside, there was a bar directly ahead of me with a tall, sandy haired woman serving drinks.  “What can I get you,” she said as I approached the bar, but she couldn’t understand my answer.  My mouth and face were so frozen from the cold and the wind that my speech was slurred, and I’m sure it seemed like I was already drunk when I hadn’t even had a drink.  She asked again, and I was able to get the word ‘coffee’ out so she could understand it. She turned around behind her to where the remnants from what was served earlier that day were still overcooking in the ***. She put the cup in front of me, and I took it with both hands and held it close against my face.

After ten minutes of thawing out I finally took my first swallow.  It  tasted even worse than it looked, but I was glad to get it, and I then asked the bar lady where the restrooms were.  “Down that corridor to the right” she said, and I asked her if she would watch my bag until I got back.  Without saying a word, she just nodded her head. As I got to the end of the corridor, I noticed a big man in a blue coat with epaulets standing outside the men’s room door.  He had a menacing no-nonsense look on his face, and didn’t smile or nod as I walked by.  His large coat was open and as I looked at him again, I saw it – he was wearing a gun.
            
                                   He Was Wearing A Gun

As I went into the men’s room, I noticed it was dark, but there was a lot of noise and commotion coming from the far end.  I looked for the light switch and when I found it, I couldn’t believe what I saw next.  Someone was stuck in the window at the far end of the men’s room, with the lower half of their body sticking out on my side and the upper half dangling outside in the cold and the dark.  It looked like a man from where I stood, and he was making large struggling sounds as he either tried to push his way out or pull his way back in.  I wasn’t sure at this point which way he was trying to go. Something else was also strange, he had something tied or wrapped around the bottom of his legs.

It was at this point that I opened up the men’s room door again and yelled outside for help.  In an instant, the big man with the blue coat and gun ran almost right over me to the window and grabbed the mans two legs, and in one strong movement pulled him back in the window and halfway across the floor.  It was then that I could see that the man’s legs were shackled, and handcuffs were holding his arms tightly together in front of his body.  He had apparently asked to use the facility and then tried to escape once inside and alone.

The large guard said “Jimmy, I warned you about trying something like this.  I have half a mind now to make you hold it all the way back to New Hampshire.” He stood the young man up and went over and closed the window. He locked it with the hasp.  He then let the man use the toilet in the one stall, but stood right there with him until he was done.  By this time I was back inside and finishing my coffee.  The guard came in, seated his prisoner at a table by the wall, and then walked over and sat down next to me at the bar.

“You really saved me a lot of trouble tonight, son” he said, “If he had gotten out that window, I doubt I’d have found him in the dark and the snow.  I’d have been here all night, and that’s ‘if’ I caught him again.  My *** would have been in a sling back at headquarters and I owe you a debt of thanks.”  You don’t owe me anything I said, I was just trying to help, and honestly didn’t know he was a prisoner when I first saw him suspended in the window. “Well just the same, you did me a big favor, and I’d like to try and return it if I could.”

He then asked me if I lived in Berwick, and I told him no, that I was traveling to Boston to see my father in the hospital and had to get off the highway on my motorcycle because of the wreck on Interstate #80.  “You’re on a what,” he asked me!  “A motorcycle” I said again, as his eyes got even wider than the epaulets on his shoulders.  “You’re either crazy or desperate, but I guess it’s none of my business.  How are you planning on getting to Boston tonight in all this snow?”  When I told him I wasn’t sure, he told me to wait at the bar.  He went to the pay phone and made a short phone call and was back in less than three minutes.  The prisoner sat at the table by the wall and just watched.

The large man came back over to the bar and said “my names Bob and I work for the U.S. Marshals Office.  I’m escorting this fugitive back to New Hampshire where he stole a car and was picked up in West Virginia at a large truck stop on Interstate #79.  Something about going to see his father whom he had never met who was dying on some Indian reservation in Oklahoma.  He’d have made it too, except he parked next to an unmarked state trooper who was having coffee, thought he looked suspicious, and then ran his plates.”

“I’m driving that big flatbed truck outside and transporting both him and the car he stole back to New Hampshire for processing and trial.  I’ve got enough room behind the car to put your bike on the trailer too.  If you’d like, I can get you as far as the Mass. Pike, and then you’ll only be about ninety minutes from Boston and should be there for breakfast. If you don’t mind ridin with ‘ole Jimmy’ here, I can get you most of the way to where you’re going. I don’t think you’ll make it all the way on that two-wheeler alone out on that highway tonight.

The Good Lord takes many forms and usually arrives when least expected.  Tonight he looked just like a U.S. Marshal, and he was even helping me push my bike up the ramp and onto the back of his flatbed.  He then even had the right straps to help me winch it down so it wouldn’t move as we then headed North through the blinding snow in the dark.  Bob knew a back way around the accident, and after a short detour on Pa. Routes #11 and #93, we were back on the Interstate and New England bound.

The three of us, Bob, Jimmy and I, spent the first hour of the ride in almost total silence.  Bob needed to stop for gas in Stroudsburg and asked me if I would accompany Jimmy to the men’s room inside.  His hands and feet were still ‘shackled,’ and I can still see the looks on the faces of the restaurant’s patrons as we walked past the register to the rest rooms off to the left.  Jimmy still never spoke a word, and we were back outside in less than five minutes.

Once back in the truck Bob said “Jesus, it’s cold out here tonight. You warm enough kid,” as he directed his comment to Jimmy.  I still had on my heavy leather bomber jacket, but Jimmy was wearing a light ‘Members Only’ cotton jacket that looked like it had seen much better days.  Jimmy didn’t respond.  I said: “Are you warm enough kid,” and Bob nudged Jimmy slightly with his right elbow.  Jimmy looked back at Bob and said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.”

Then Bob started to speak again.  “You know it’s a **** shame you got yourself into this mess.  In looking at your record, it’s clean, and this is your first offense.  What in God’s name possessed you to steal a car and try to make it all the way to Oklahoma in weather like this?”  Jimmy looked down at the floor for the longest time and then raised his head, looked at me first, and then over at Bob …

“My Mom got a letter last week saying that the man who is supposed to be my father was in the Choctaw Nation Indian Hospital in Talihina Oklahoma.  They also told her that he was dying of lung cancer and they didn’t expect him to last long.  His only wish before he died was to see the son that he abandoned right before he was shipped off to Seoul during the Korean War. I tried to borrow my uncle’s car, but he needed it for work.  We have neighbors down the street who have a car that just sits. They have a trailer in Florida for the winter, and I planned to have it back before anyone missed it.  The problem was that their son came over to check on the place, saw the car was missing, and reported it to the cops. I never meant to keep it, I just wanted to get down and back before anyone noticed.”

“Dumb, Dumb, Dumb, Bob said!  Don’t you know they make buses for that.”  Jimmy says he never thought that far, and given the choice again that’s what he’d do.  Bob took one more long look at Jimmy and just slowly shook his head.  Then he said to both of us, “how old are you boys?”  I said 23, as Jimmy nodded his head acknowledging that he was the same age.  Bob then said, “I got bookends here, both goin in different directions,”

Jimmy then went on to say, “My mom my little sister and I live in a public housing project in Laconia.  I never knew my dad, but my grandma, when she was alive, said that he was a pretty good guy.  My mother would never talk about why he left, and I felt like this was my last chance to not only meet him but to find all that out before he passed.”  I glanced over at Bob and it looked like his eyes were welling up behind the thick glasses he wore.  Jimmy then said: “If I got to rethink this thing, I would have stayed in New Hampshire.  It just ‘seemed’ like the right thing to do at the time.

We rode for the next hour in silence.  Bob already knew my story, and I guess he didn’t think sharing it with Jimmy would make him feel any better.  The story of an upper middle class college kid on the way to see his dad in Boston would probably only serve to make what he was feeling now even worse.  The sign up ahead said ‘Hartford, 23 miles’. Bob said, “Kurt, this is where we drop you off.  If you cut northeast on Rt # 84, it will take you to the Mass.Pike.  From where you pick up the pike, you should then be no more than an hour or so from downtown Boston.

During those last 23 miles Bob spoke to Jimmy again.  I think he wanted me to hear it too. “Jimmy,” Bob said, “I’m gonna try and help you outta this mess.  I believe you’re basically a good kid and deserve a second chance.  Somebody helped me once a long time ago and it made all the difference in my life.”  Bob looked over at me and said. “Kurt, whatta you think?”  I said I agreed, and that I was sure that if given another chance, Jimmy would never do anything like this again.  Jimmy said nothing, as his head was again pointed down toward the floor.

“I’ll testify for you at your hearing,” Bob said, “and although I don’t know who the judge will be, in most cases they listen when a federal marshal speaks up on behalf of the suspect.  It doesn’t happen real often, and that’s why they listen when it does.

    More Than Geographical Borders Had Now Been Crossed,
             Human Borders Were Being Expanded Too!

We arrived in Hartford and Bob pulled the truck over. He slid down the ramp and attached it to the back of the flat wooden bed. Jimmy even tried to help as we backed the Honda down the ramp. They both stood there as I turned the key and the bike fired up on the first try.  Bob then said, “You got enough money to make it the rest of the way, kid,” I said that I did, and as I stuck out my hand to thank him he was already on his way back to the truck with his arm around Jimmy’s shoulder.

The ride up #84 and then #90 East into Boston was cold but at least it was dry.  No snow had made it this far North.  My father’s operation would be successful, and I had been able to spend most of the night before the surgery with him in his hospital room.  He couldn’t believe that I had come so far, and through so much, just to be with him at that time. I told him about meeting Jimmy and Bob, and he said: “Son, that boys gonna do just fine.  Getting caught, and then being transferred by Bob, is the best thing that ever happened to him.”  

“I had something like that happen to me in Nebraska back in 1940, and without help my life may have taken an entirely different turn.  My options were, either go away for awhile, or join the United States Marine Corps — Thank God for the ‘Corps.”  My dad had run away from home during the depression at 13 and was headed down a very uncertain path until given that choice by someone who cared so very long ago.

“It only takes one person to make all the difference,” my dad said, and I’m so happy and grateful that you’re here with me tonight.

As they wheeled my dad into surgery the next morning, I couldn’t help but think about Jimmy, the kid who was my age and never got to see his dad before it was too late.

On that fated night, two young men ‘seemingly’ going in opposite directions had met in the driving snow. One was looking for a father he had only heard about but never knew.  The other trying to get to a father he knew so well and didn’t think he could live without.

          

      Jimmy Was Adopted That Night Through The Purity
                        Of His Misguided Intention …
                       As So Few Times In Life We Are!