Bob and Kathy lived next door
They picked up our leaves and
swept our driveway and porch floor
Neighbors. Yes, but so much more.

For thirty five Glorious. years
We Watched both our families grow
Love and respect Is was all we know

Bob’s passion ,was restoring old cars
That’s what they lived for, who they are.
Car shows , The annual Vetran’s parade
Bob was celebrated for his choices made
To showClassic 1920 Henry Ford model T
Custom detail a delight for all to see

The United States pays obeisance to
The military on Veterans Day
Bob an Army soldier, Green Beret
He was a bad ***,  that’s what he would say

In the blink of an eye, Happy Time passed
We realize why, Good things never last
Full of laughter, love and Many tears
Inevitable realization of their fears

As they age, Life turned the page
Health became their Clock, their gage
Out of the blue ,One fateful day, Bob fell ill
Cancer slows the body to a still

Bob would say “I’m not ready to die today”
We all knew Death was waiting at Bay
The Next phase ,The long goodbye they say
Bob wouldn’t have it any other way

Cancer in remission
Life was a condition
Weakening body in transition
Stealing lives without permission

Bob fought the good fight
Holding on with all his might
After each procedure ,Bouncing back
It was tough to keep Life, love on track

Family came over to watch him die
Only to see him fight and try
Bob put on a brave face,
which was a lie
His wife Kathy Sneaks off to cry
Cancer you cannot deny

Finally Death came to call
Eventually it will ,for us all

The children live in town,
Now, they are never around
The house sits dark and bare
Nobody is ever there

Kathy lives in the house alone
Their house is no longer at home

"Read The Road," a recommendation
From a friend, fellow scholar, gentleman,
And so I struck out on the road, following
a man and his son pushing a shopping cart
Laden with food and blankets, and not much more.

Nuclear winter with cannibals seems to be the setting,
No green visible of any kind, and even snow is gray,
(Or, for McCarthy, grey). The road is long, littered, broken,
As is the man, as is the boy. No evident salvation, ever,
The man thinks, "There is no God. We are his prophets."

Still, beside the sea, gray, wild, cold, with the man coughing
His last ****** breaths in the dirt, tells his son he must
Move on, a dying man in a filthy blanket clinging to hope
For his son, crying under a dead winter sky, kneeling by him, poisoned soil beneath them, and down to a few cans of beans.

The old man next door loves birds,
Spends hours by his window every day
Watching his feeders without words,
Smiling as the winged ones come his way.

He lugs home sacks of feed and cob dry corn
Though his wife frets his spending.
He finds that kindness leaves him less forlorn,
Brings his old heart and mind some mending.

So out he goes to scrape rain-soaked seeds,
Clears the troughs, replaces suet in the cages,
Before retreating to his favorite chair to read,
Looking up to smile while turning pages.

Farm folk - Ranch folk,
Cattle and horses and wheat,
A world of sky and wind,
A land of temporary green,
Permanent brown,
Twenty-five miles from town.
A world of work,
Dirt in the air and in the lungs
Heat waves shimmering
A land of blowing cold,
Or heated mirage,
Day after day after day,
Until books and learning
Called me away.

Dead ones walking from cradles to graves,
Flesh somehow still living, feeding as it craves
Maleficent obsessions stirring passions rave
Madness in our ravings, sorrowing, we slave
We are the Living Dead; empty souls are we.
Unaware of living death, no living Salve seek we.

Until the furious Light of Grace pierces these cadaverous husks,
Awakens souls long slumbering in the death of dusk.
The Savior calls us from our sleep, "Arise and come to me!"
And those who hear His urgent call awake and are set free
The living dead, cannot awake through anything we've done.
The Living souls are living now through life in Heaven's Son.

As we wait beneath the mountains
For the passes to clear.

The river fills in torrents
As the horses and the men grow thin.

Feats of winter thriving
Fade in the springtime starving.

Birds fly high above,
Finding open water beyond us.

We wait in wonderment.
The dogs sense danger as we eye them.

Retreading the amphitheater steps
To my accustomed contemplative space
To see myself again in the eyes of the Fates,
Who spin and measure and snip.

Instead of Oedipus and Iocasta,
Arthur Miller is the Muse whose Loman
Must my aging sense abuse and disabuse
If I but can.

Erikson sits here beside me, taking me along
The 8 staged declension or ascension of aging
And looks me square and says, "Integrity or Despair?"
While I am sitting here.

My students, nearing 20 years of age
See Hoffman's Loman strut and rage his memories,
Bemused they turn away as if to say this dreaming
Is for older men.

I am an older man, and I cannot deny the meaning
Of old Miller's play packs much more punch
Today than just a decade back, but I am driven
Once again to this assay.

I know the old hymn, "O When I Come to the End
Of My Journey," and I long to die in peace,
Hands folded in an easy rest, content in every thought,
At seeing God's own Hand.
In His integrity, I'll stand.