Category Archives: Poems

Time

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There is only time

it’s not yours to give, take, waste, or spend.
You cannot pass, tell, save, or bide it;
You cannot make it, it will never end.
You can’t stop, have, lose, or find it.

It will not expire, crawl, creep or drag;
there is no past, double, quick or run.
No good times, sometimes, old, or lag;
it can’t be told by clock, or bell, or sun.

You cannot kill it, poison, stop, or shoot it;
there is no hang time, short or long, or nigh.
You can’t restart, replay, reverse, reboot it.
There is only time. It will not die.

You will die.
Time will fly.

The night before Christmas

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‘Twas the night before Christmas and with any luck,
We’d be getting a visit from a UPS truck.
The TV was off and the lights were all on
In hopes to see packages from Amazon.
Thank God there’s no kids to raise a big fuss;
For better or worse, there’s just two of us.
And yet, anticipation can be such a drag.
Had we waited too long to order our swag?
When suddenly out on the porch with a thump
Came a curse and an epithet, “Miserable dump!”
I ran to the door and wrestled it open
(to see lots of boxes, was what I was hopin’).
Instead amidst all the turmoil and noise
On the porch lay a couple of neighborhood boys.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said in a huff,
Hoping the rascals would not call my bluff.
“We was gonna sing you a Christmas carol
But instead ended up ass over barrel.”
I invited them in, and they sang for a tip,
And I trundled them off with good fellowship,
When up the front steps in a jolly brown suit
Came the UPS man, with boxes of loot.
With smiles all around, we parted with joy,
Me, the UPS man, and the neighborhood boys.
I watched the big guy in his UPS suit
Turn and wave at us all with a wink and a hoot.
As he mounted his truck, and rolled up his sleeves,
“Merry Christmas,” he cried, “and watch out for thieves!”

Reunion

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After hours of fitful turning,
Georgie fell to sleeping,
The rasping cough too strenuous
The light too ambiguous,
His eyelids too large to will open

In his dream,
All that ever was and all that shall be
Converged on him, and he saw the limitless
And held it close to his heart

He saw the child’s Christmas, one with
Rubble-strewn streets and bomb-laced
Windows, the spanking cry of new-born
Wrinkled joy, one with tear-washed dead lips
Of a life, spent and discarded, brushed aside

He saw the stars, new and old, explode eternally,
Worlds awash with life and others bereft of it
And tiny, forlorn pulses in ancient crevices,
Which would have been long forgotten
Had anyone ever known of them.

He could see them all, and all seemed dear,
The sublime and the petty,
The ecstasy and the torment,
Down to the final finalness, indistinguishable
From the beginning

Even down to the last corner of the vastness,
Down to the last lonely planet
Where Georgie lay on the gurney,
The sheet pulled over his unblinking face.

Closing credits

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I used to picture myself on that horse
that rides from sunset to sunset,
leaving nothing behind but long shadows

the dream that makes of loneliness
a virtue and of love a dull ache
to cleanse the heart of wistfulness.

Me and Shane. While they’re resting in peace
we’re saddling our horses, checking our
provisions, eyes glazed wide open,

while they’re calling out we’re receding
into the distance, over the rise.
They never see us looking back, blinking

into the new sunrise at our backs

Reflections on a park bench in autumn

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Time is winning this game,
score tied, one to infinity,
the last stop on this old trolley line
looms ahead, witless, wanton.

It’s cold, let’s face it, but
I can’t help loving the slatted
sunlight, the already tattered leaves
flinging themselves underfoot.

I may be hopelessly anchored
here in this silty backwater
astride these gifts of algae
given long ago,

but I am surely more than just a worm
through time. I sink, I swim, all a-whim,
the winds washing the stained earth.
Still, there are fates involved, I’m told.

Dreams, like phantoms, peer out
from under sheaves of light.
Live with ghosts, and before long,
you begin to feel thin yourself.

A sparrow lands at my feet.
All I can do is stare dumbly.
“I’m so sorry,” sighs the breeze,
“May I do it again?”