The Soil That Needs No Mending

What moments are like the ones
When children, anywhere, stumble
-At a sudden halt to their gallops, their runs-
Upon some abandoned structure, crumbled?
What rush of the sudden fireworks of dreams
That in the galaxy of a child’s eye beams
When first they sink bare feet in streams?

What moments are left us, when we are grown,
When we are mired by all that we’ve seen
And the seeds of malaise and mistrust have been sewn
In our aging garden, once hopeful and green?
Why, all of the moments are left to us still,
Compared to the cosmos, saplings on a window sill
Our earth is yet rich and yearns for the till.

We Understand Much Later

I wish so much to turn the clock, that we again were young
To shield from you the gruesome mud the past has cruelly slung;
I wish I’d been around back then to ask you to the dance
I would have stood and stammered, doubting I would have a chance.
I’m sorry that pubescent boys then didn’t understand
The stellar, witty angel with whom no one would hold hands;
That no wiser young man ever brought to your door wild-flowers
Nor go strolling with you, free and lost, outside in April showers.
It may be that those woes helped make you who you are today
And would you be the girl for me, if they’d gone some other way?
I dare not try to speculate, I only know that now
Those vulgar clowns should thank their stars for one kiss to your brow.

Pontiac

Sitting wide, hugging the road
Tearing the pavement, speed overload
Road trip, see old friends
Boredom, fast around the bends-
Fuel up, calm down
Hit the highways, not the town.
Hospital bound,
Just cruising around,
Sort out some things
On my Pontiac wings,
Racing away
From heartache today
No rearview
No clear view.
Moving again, to some new place
Planning a life- to treble and bass
A radio song
For a friend that’s gone;
That light was red
Push through instead.
Time to say “sorry”, pick up some flowers
Finding the words and driving for hours-
That car was my buddy
All scraped up and muddy
We were in hell:
It’s a drive-thru, it’s swell-
When it died it was strange
To just make some exchange

After all we’d been through.
After all we’d been through.

Strange Times

How curious it seemed to me,
That there were still students pouring out
Onto that sloping street from the school
Where so much of my formative rage
Had settled like dust and blown away!
Why would anyone still attend?
Those years are long gone- I survived,
Scratched and broken but ardent and true.
How humorous then it seemed
To be startled that places and deeds
Didn’t simply cease to exist when I
Had ceased to exist in them;
And how aware it made me, tragically,
Of the decades that had passed.

Divergence

Fallen from the same oak
Onto the common earth
Having lingered in the grasses
Watched the clouds roll by;
Pushed along by the winds
Sometimes closer together
Sometimes further apart –
We have found new grounds
And cannot now see one another.
It was sweet to drink the sun and rain
From the same cup, a while.
Goodbye then, old friend
May you prosper in your way.

Hats

Van Gogh’s Self Portrait, with a humble hat.

One for each and every mood or weather
Cotton or felt, straw or suede, silk or wool
With feather, of leather, woven together
With a braid, well made, plain or colourful –

The saucy bowler, fedora, beret –
The newsboy, the cowboy, each can amend
The plight of the bald man who chides the toupee
And revels in this, an old tasteful trend.

Blasphemers might say that two would suffice
But they do not wonder, each day, who they are –
A man of vice, of dice, spice or precise;
Bizarre, in a bar, or playing guitar.

Today I am — yesterday’s revision
In a diff’rent hat, fraught with indecision.