I wish he had less stress and she less grief,
but there’s not much for either I can do –
they’re grown and have to manage their relief.
I start to fret, and then admit that’s true.
If I were dead, they’d find their avenues
without my words, deserving their own pain
or boon. I love them and I let them choose;
I’ll focus on a pause in daily rain.
I’m casting back to 43 years old,
the age my youngest is, and as I look
around for recollections lines might hold,
I feel I need some substance for the hook.
I may not find good memories to book
unless my research yields what I forget.
It’s early yet – hope will not be forsook
before I rise to toss a wider net.
While bagging life detritus with a friend,
we reminisced about our younger days
in San Francisco – hours we would spend
in bars, at toothsome lunches, our forays
for pleasure after work, when we’d intend
avoiding what home held. It was a phase
we savor, and won’t clutter with false claims,
but now we ransack memory for names.
The funerals in movies I have seen
occur on rainy days, beneath a sky
as dark as mourning clothes, and with the sheen
of fallen water on umbrellas high
above bowed heads. But ours was winter green
on grass, caressed by sunlight, and each eye
looked forward while our speech embraced her past.
Today’s assay is bound in overcast.
This ring I took, by right. I wasn’t bold.
She asked me many times to take a look
and after all, when life had lost its hold,
this ring I took.
Expected death is leaving no one shook;
a century is more than most have tolled.
I want no furniture, no art, no book.
But these three bands of different colored gold –
the white, the rose, the yellow – like a hook
have caught and taught me fondness manifold.
This ring I took.
I hope the strike has ended when next week
I post this little stanza of eight lines.
Here’s wishing teachers get most things they seek,
and there’s a pause to hearing parent whines.
The issues aren’t puzzling or unique;
the kids are only missing Valentines.
The time’s long passed for fairness. Equity
ignored metastasizes steadily.
I’ve always liked my solitude, it’s true,
but I’ve my room and nothing much forbids
me spending time with others – 2, 2, 2 –
my parents once, my brothers, and my kids.
I have relationships that do me good,
and maybe that’s why I don’t want a mate
the way some girlfriends tell me that I should –
I tried that more than twice and learned I hate
frustrated more than lonely; it’s no fun.
The friends who nag are actually bereft
of family: from death, M’s down to one;
P hurt her kin and now there’s nothing left.
Each stands alone and seeks a mate, to mark
her room and vanquish goblins in the dark.
I understand that recall isn’t true,
and witnesses are infamously wrong,
so will it matter all that much to you
if I’m inventive when I write your song?
I promise to be credible, endue
your deeds with motivation clear and strong.
I feel compelled to make the story sound,
and running plot to sense, see what I found?
I woke too early but I stayed in bed.
From 5 to 6, I hunkered down some more.
I planned the daily tasks and thought instead
of dreaming, clocked the light through window door,
and then let floor plans cycle through my head
from houses I inhabited before.
Much more than once, I’ve populated naps
with habitat schematics and old maps.
If I postponed a project’s origin
until I had the perfect starting phrase
and outline too, I never would begin.
Instead I start, and as the work displays,
it triggers gears that mesh and move within –
emotion lubricates, idea conveys
attention to momentum’s certain speed
and slowly surely sentences proceed.
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