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Randall Donahoo Poem
You have left me without leaving,
Your presence here beyond deceiving.
We share a space where you are not,
You’ve gone on to I know not what.
Desertion was not your plan at all,
But your mind, by a siren call,
Loosed our forever knot,
And left me looking where you’re not
For the love and life we shared,
Shattered now with no hope spared.
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2021
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Randall Donahoo Poem
When she asked what to get her Mother this Christmas,
Her Father said, “Life’s most expensive gift of all.
A little of your time is all she wants from you.
Forget buying, forgo wrapping, no boxes big or small;
Give her the gift of what she misses most. Just you.
If that’s too much to expect, of course it’s your call.
We know it’s a busy life, as we’ve lived it ourselves.”
I fear my Mother felt the same ‘til my hurry began to stall.
I made it up in later years, but backfilling love into years gone by
Is a task impossible to achieve, and the gap can become a wall.
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2022
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Randall Donahoo Poem
Here is a truth as hard as honed steel,
It cuts like a knife but rolls like a wheel
Approaching with promise of nearness and love,
But slicing as deeply as hate from above.
It severs not the connection in between,
Yet it minces a Mother in ways unseen.
After years in her mold, your self you exert
By cutting her under and enjoying her hurt.
You joke with your friends how controlling she is
Ya’ll drink and you laugh, creating foul aliases,
Childishly exaggerating, thoughtlessly you rally,
Bolstering your girlie group but keeping no tally
Of the dishonor you pile on both Mothers AND spawn.
Will this cruelty not live on once Moms are gone?
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2021
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Randall Donahoo Poem
A ghost came to visit during the night,
Haunting with visions of what might have been.
Sleep tiptoed from the room with guilt,
Leaving me alone with another old friend.
I wasn’t afraid when the ghost slipped in,
He’d been a good friend to his bitter end,
But the melancholy ache his end began
Is a shaft through my soul his ghost can’t rescind.
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2022
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Randall Donahoo Poem
The day was wearing on when the old man gingerly stepped outside;
Thanks to an earlier breeze and short rainfall, cool air greeted, arms wide.
“The air is clearer too!” he cheered… though only in his head, he hopingly joked,
But smog had finally reached out to them, mostly due to wildfires smoked.
He winced as he closed the door, that thumb pain still surprising, despite back and knee.
Down the porch steps he teetered just the tiniest bit, but sure none else could see,
He took his time strolling slowly to what had been his and his dear’s
Favorite part of their neighborhood walk for more than forty years.
That thought tugs a string running through his aging soul (since she walks along “no-mo”)
But it’s been tugged so often and by so very much of late, he just lets it go.
The man’s grumpy veneer wavers as he turns up the alley just next door.
Yet with stream running alongside, it isn’t just an alley in neighborhood lore.
The old man has taken to calling it Ersatz Creek, though few know the joke therein,
But an irrigation ditch has given this two-block stretch a zone with its very own zen.
Backyard fences, trees and flowers, even curious wildlife serve sweet solace here,
And the hurried exerciser slows one’s pace as a kind of meditation spreads inner cheer.
Into this rich world the old man descends, a favored but seldom sought target in mind,
He slowly strolls, resolved to really see each flower, bee, and floating leaf his eyes can find.
Reaching where path and Creek diverge, he edges past a tree into a secluded place.
By wear, he’s sure others come here when cares become nearly too much to face,
A little time, perhaps a bit of prayer, allowing the Stream to wash away worries and such debris.
The old man sits alone for a while, then thinks, “Perhaps this time my Creek washes away me.”
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2021
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Randall Donahoo Poem
As I sat down with my pen
A western poem to begin,
I remembered my cowboy hat
Was in my chair when I sat.
So, I was thinkin’ “What an ass
To have let such come to pass!”
Cause now my fair cowboy muse
Was shunned away and on the loose.
Then dear wife reminded me
That either end, for her, seemed to be
The source of stuff about the same,
A substance worthy of mostly shame.
The hat would work at either end,
Without either, the muse can fend.
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2021
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Randall Donahoo Poem
A local politico dropped by today,
To spread his vision along his way.
His view, to me, seemed a bit lacking.
I’ve seen his kind and results of their snacking
On what I’ve earned through time and work.
I’ve met only one who wasn’t a jerk,
So I shot him (with camera) and bid him farewell;
Where I left him behind I never will tell,
He shall not again be smearing this pane,
Nor did he ever feel his or my pain.
Copyright © Randall Donahoo | Year Posted 2021
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