Dawn’s creep arrives unnoticed,
camouflaged by dense fog.
Stressed trees,
shed leaves prematurely on this Labor Day,
and in the driveway, I hear Doves enjoying,
their menu for today.
A holiday breakfast of smashed Acorns,
courtesy of our car tires.
This breakfast is served up annualy
by an Oak Tree I planted fifty + years ago.
Forecast is for scattered showers,
but it won’t matter, no cookout planned.
I’ll do what I’m doing and sip cooling coffee
from my favorite “published poet” mug.
It won’t be Myleopathy,
C.K.D., C.H.D that kills me,
It will be all this excitement!!!
Jesus Loves Us!
I can’t believe you’re not in the world anymore.
It’s like someone turned off all the lights
And the world went home.
The party, prematurely cut off—
Your face contours etched into my biology.
I feel you in every empty space,
Every pregnant pause.
You are the words I’ve forgotten,
The car keys I lost.
You are the second before I wake up,
My fevered dream.
You’re in every atom, every breath—
But damn, I still can’t feel you.
I want to melt and fade into you.
The silence is a violence
I challenge with poetry.
I throw metaphors
Into the void,
Hoping the void will answer back
In your voice.
Death is not the answer—
But the truth.
Grief is a runaway train
Ploughing through fields of wildflowers
Where we sat once,
Almost touching.
I still wait for your hand in the dark.
And I never got to say goodbye.
And the lights never came back on.
God Wants Our Best
Miracle Man
4/8/2025
At the beginning of life all don’t start the same,
many have the advantages of money or name.
No person ever knows what their life might entail,
some will become dreamers and see many dreams fail.
But many will be an over-comer to some degree,
Committed to success, others living life carefree.
But God has placed in each the will to survive,
The only thing equal is that we start out alive.
God gives us discernment of right and wrong,
He takes some prematurely, some lives He’ll prolong.
But an expiration date has been assigned to each,
we must not betray His trust by our actions or speech.
Let the air
stay freshly air
and the breeze
breeze freely along
let death not be
our care
let love not seem
so often rare
let your heart
not prematurely
feel undone
let God have His
Living Fun
He blinks in and out in a wingchair,
overhears what visitors say
when patients
can be talked about
as if not there.
People speak well of the dying,
even of dying strangers,
to him their words
prematurely shovel earth.
The terminally sick
must be accommodated,
penciled into time slots,
eased gently into oblivion.
He listens as he slips downstream
on a raft of morphine.
These last trips are scenes taken
from childhood books.
His own life story has become
absurd, it is almost as if
he is a character in someone else's life,
a Huckleberry Finn
whistling through Dantes Inferno.
What he really wants
is a rocking horse and ice-cream.
A nurse brings him ice-cream,
but it's the wrong flavor.
He wonders if anyone can see
the horse he rides upon,
his ten-gallon hat is as white
as a flying nun's Cornette.
The occasional visitors
watch the dying in dreadful relief.
Hypnotic minds drone like trapped bee's.
Frank Sinatra jets in from wonderland,
hands him a coloring book.
If only he had crayons
to fill in the blanks.
I've always had the sneaking suspicion I'd never grow old.
I'm decaying prematurely,
slowly rotting in my core with every mind-numbing day.
"Why must every good thing get ruined?"
Home is no longer where happy is.
So why have you staked your claim on my psyche?
Cold blue tile is the foundation from which two children build their world.
I can discern from it nothing but terrifying probabilities.
Everything has an end.
Here we are timeless.
Poems selected (some from this account, some from another, some never posted):
1. Blue Marker Castles
2. Decaying Prematurely
3. Saturday, December 22nd
4. Words I'll Never Say
5. ComeHoming - Matthew 15:4
6. On Cybercoercion
7. Airport Cherubs
8. Winter's Warning
9. Who am I without achievement?
10. Nothing really changes in an airport
I’m decaying prematurely,
with a marked efficiency I never utilized in life.
Bits of ash float from my mouth each time it opens
and my hands mark all I touch
with a temporary smudge.
I’m going out like a burning star.
I can feel it.
My friends receive text after text of inane thoughts
impossible for anyone to appreciate.
They have no value;
I’m simply yelling into a void.
I want you to know me before I go.
Take what you can from this ash I leave.
Through the rubble lies sunsets and love for you.
Maybe it’s ruined, but I’ll heave it towards you anyway.
I hope there’s any value in it
to make my passing slightly bittersweet.
I’ll love you from below.
I swear on it.
So many documented cases when hope,
Was prematurely extinguished by Doctors,
So many documented cases when hope,
Was about to be extinguished by law,
But before sentence could be carried out on hope,
They witnessed hope's flame burning brighter than ever,
Resulting in more questions than answers on the nature,
And purpose of hope.
As far as faith in miracles is concerned.
Yet I still have no definitive answer to my question,
Should we ever decide when others should give up hope,
Except that to err is human,
And forgiveness of those who get it wrong,
Or have clear evidence that hope has moved on,
And hidden it for misguided or mischievous reasons,
May be the only way,
With hopefully a realization over time that hope,
Albeit fickle or not, is what keeps many a human in the game,
Long enough for miracles to come to fruition.
At a very young age
He knew what he wanted to be
Like his father before him
A ‘Keeper of the Sea’
He married his childhood sweetheart
They loved unconditionally
Dreams and hopes for the future
Of raising a family
They lived in the lighthouse cottage
A loving home comfortable and cosy
They didn’t have or want for much
A happy life lived modestly
Both felt at one with the lighthouse
Admired the splendor and strength of the sea
The magnificence of the night sky
Awed by the stars and moon's artistry
Sadly, the universe had different plans
She left this world prematurely
A devastated broken man
Now alone in his lighthouse by the sea
The years rolled by slowly
An old man now was he
Still in his beloved lighthouse
As ‘Keeper of the Sea’
Each night since she passed he talked to her
He felt her presence and love in the Lantern Room
It soothed his lonely soul and his sorrow
Being closer to heaven, the stars and the moon
Morning Coffee & Apple Fritters
Miracle Man
October 2, 2024
At mornings first light
wind existing as a whisper.
Soon future fall mornings
will become much crisper.
With coffee mug in hand
I enjoy placid patio time.
Breeze is barely sufficient
to vocalize our wind chime.
The leaves are now turning,
some prematurely falling.
From a high sky above
I hear sounds of geese calling.
Seeking a less cold clime
to endure winters freeze.
Canadian Geese flying south
is “winters Returning” first keys.
How did I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I loved thee with open arms
Embracing, exploring
Undiscovered territories.
I loved thee in floor plans and daydreams.
I loved thee too far ahead
In places where we are yet to belong to
In places where we will never be.
In truth, perhaps, I loved you only in theory.
For how could I have loved you
When the present is shackled
And I unable to free it for I have not its key?
Have I even loved when I only fought for its potential?
Can I be blamed for trying to love prematurely?
HEART GENTLE EYE MINDFUL
Keep heart gentle, yet eye mindful
With passion hovering at the edge
There’s a time and place for both
Rarely twinned, but each required
Balance is kept with a critical view
Fire and flame for tempering steel
Yet also used to soften and anneal
As it reaches the appropriate hue
But always aware of getting mired
And prematurely taking that oath
Or when teetering up on the ledge
Keep heart gentle, yet eye mindful
Where did she go, that girl in the photograph?
Suspended in time, preserved like a fly
petrified in amber, and petrified by life.
Where is she now, that girl with furrowed brow?
Beautiful yet fighting for survival. Youthful
but prematurely aged by her woes, no highs
just lows and a catalogue of disappointments
to carry in the portmanteau of her existence.
Not a flicker of happiness as I look deep into the frame.
I avert my eyes and look into the mirror, and
there she is staring back at me. Older now
but recognisable; softened by the years somehow.
Yes, older now, and perhaps a little wiser.
Her beauty has matured like a vintage wine
and there’s no sign of the girlish angst that
once wrinkled her temple, or caused her to
hide behind a mask of false confidence which
covered the insecurity and fear that she felt.
Now she is strong, a few wrinkles of experience,
a little stiff and aching from the marathon of life,
but graceful and elegant in her later years,
and happy, yes truly happy now. The reflection
replaces the senescent photograph in my mind,
and reminds me that I’m safe and home at last.
Located deep in the Muskerry Gaeltacht
The old village of Ballyvourney
Seen from atop Mullaghanish
One better not leave prematurely
Walking through Ballymakeera
I see the Holy Well draw near
Down here in green Ballyvourney
Where Gobnait found nine white deer
I look over the bridge
Gliding to me
Is a gentle black swan
Not an unusual sight
On the River Sullane
The mist drifts above the roadway
At the gates of the graveyard
Old relatives, re-acquainted
Memories no longer jarred
In the fields, on the outskirts of Coolea
The cutting of turf can be seen
Yet as the day moves to nightfall
Hear songs of Poitín
Again, I emerge from the hillside
And turn off at Slivereagh Cross
Then take the path north to Millstreet
Too much time on the doss
A few wet, wind scorched leaves,
are pressed like Victorian mementos
upon the wooden walkway
The trees in this forested park are tattered,
or stand like blackened forked skewers
piercing the stark air.
Autumn fell too far, too soon.
Winter grabbed the sky and quickly froze it.
Now the odd leaf upon the ground
seems abandoned, homeless,
unable now to be anything
but the litter of yesterday.
A good day for wading through
the history of this changing season,
to watch those prematurely gray ghosts
hobbling along a pathway
seeking threadbare sparks of life.
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