Tag Archives: Love

THE TWINKLE

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THE TWINKLE
(Eulogy at Father’s funeral)

There is a thing about light
no matter where it starts it never stops
even if it takes a million years
to get from the twinkling stars to here

There was a twinkle in the eyes of this man
A twinkle of innocent mischief and inner joy
greeting every man and woman
every girl and boy

When you saw it you knew that he liked you
and never doubted that you’d like him too

AND HE WAS RIGHT

Because there is a thing about light

A million years from now
and no one knows how far
they will see it on some star

FATHER’S POEM

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged , , , / / by

FATHER’S POEM

My father’s poems
did not come down to us on paper

He was eight years old when his mother died
his youngest brother not yet three

They say he adopted the care
of the sweet sad child
and told him a story each night

Night after night after night

New stories he made up each night

And he would gather him up in the story
and hold him there
until he slept

ROBERTA’S WEDDING

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Travel / tagged , , / / by

ROBERTA’S WEDDING

When I returned from anywhere by air

Roberta would run
full out across the crowded floor
take a gymnast’s leap ten feet away
and fly through the air into my arms

So pure a show it was of joy and love
so affirming of the goodness of all life
so full of youth’s unquestioned faith
she would be safely caught and held

that travelers all around

would stand in awe

Today she runs across a crowded floor
and leaps with equal joy
into the arms of another man with
equal trust she will be safely caught and held

And now I see what all those others saw

and I stand back in awe

A NEW WORD

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged , / / by

A NEW WORD

We need a new word

A word for how you feel about someone
that you want to hang around with all of the time

I mean really want to be with every night and day

A word for that feeling that makes your heart sing
every time you see them

Causes a warm smile to rise every time you think of
them

Love doesn’t quite do it anymore
it has been battered and bruised and bled too often

A word for that feeling that where you meet them is
in a land of
acceptance, filled with air so light that fear cannot
breathe it

Friend won’t do, even though
friends are people you can count on, and who can count on
you,

And brother this and brother that, or sister this and
sister that are now used by people who have nothing
more in common than a perceived common enemy

No, we need a new word

Something as fresh and clean and bright and pure and
as innocent as a baby’s chortling laugh

Yes we need a new word and we need it bad

I sure hope we don’t find it

ODE TO NERUDA

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged , , , , / / by

ODE TO NERUDA

You have gifted the world with your being
and your words the fruits of your being

You have seen the mother and the lover
in the sea tides rocking rhyme

In the flowers of her hair
in your politics of care

You remind us of the role of all poets
to open and meet the world naked

To perceive the world naked
to receive the world naked

To sing the world naked
naked as your hand

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged , , , , / / by

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

It was a Sunday afternoon about a year ago today
I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand I just knew I couldn’t stay

So I took off for Toronto fifteen hundred miles away

Two days of boring meetings,
couldn’t stand to have one more
didn’t know where I needed to be
but it wasn’t here I knew for sure

So I grabbed a train to Windsor
and Detroit which lies next door

Outside spring was springing and calling more and more
and I’d get to see some country that I’d never seen before

Oh, the sheep were soft upon the land
and there was magic in the day
as I sipped my rum and cola
and rhymed couplets all the way

Checked in on Wednesday, wondering what to do
maybe I could try to call a good old friend or two

There was a man I’d met in Banff
just three weeks before
a man of love and wisdom
that I’d like to see once more

And a lady of my poems
that I’d seen just twice before
thirty minutes in an airport
and two hours on the shore

He was busy in a meeting she answered on first try
she had booked off work without knowing why

And when I told her that I was in her town
she said “I’ve got a story and I’ll be right down”

It seems that her grand dad
who had raised her as a child
had died not long ago
and the grief had drove her wild

The family all were fighting for the pennies on his eyes
and there was no one there to hear her heartfelt cries

So she ran from that hospital not knowing what to do
and stood on the highest hill alone in a sky of blue

And loudly called my name
“Please come, please, I need you”

When I asked had she made this cry
and had I come real soon

“Oh it wasn’t very long ago
just Sunday afternoon”

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia / tagged , , , / / by

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country

One classmate’s father’s suicide with shotgun
splattered walls

One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch

One with leukemia, white as the snow

One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and
mysterious as the language

One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for

She’s only interested in grade 9 boys

One bruised heart

Not yet hard enough to be broken

OH TO NERUDA

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged , , , / / by

OH TO NERUDA

Oh Pablo you rise up
from a land, long as a woman’s back
And you have loved your land
as you would love a woman
as you have loved women as you loved
your land

Every rock and shoal of their coastlines
every mood of their tides

You have caressed them
with your mind and your heart
and your hands
And have received the treasures
that must
always rise up
from their endless depths
to meet such a touch

EAGLE ON THE MOON

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EAGLE ON THE MOON

When the Eagle lands on the moon
the Indian will come back
into his power

When the mother is in pain
the children who never forgot
will remind

They will have the medicine
to heal her wounds
They will sit with her while
strength returns

And the children who forgot
will remember

and bring flowers