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First Light

First light;
One cherished moment of time
One tiny ball twinkling,
In western skies;
A moment while thinking
As darkness is sinking from dawn that is rising
Horizon’s first light;
Probing my heart,
My tears, my fears
How they depart in all my joys of yesteryears,
So long ago, so very few to go;
First light is pure and clean,
A mind so keen to ever know,
So sentient I am now,
A consciousness within,
Is a gift I’ll cherish evermore;
Though peerless eyes for seeing,
My mind is yet foreseeing
A time existing in the mist
Upon the sea the sky had kissed
With horizon’s obscure light
An faceless world of faithless people
Where I reside,
A vacant world of lonely crowds;
That I have touched
Behind their eyes so blind ...
And am I one who sees the light,
While others only watch the night,
A flicker that is not so bright?
Which always fades again;
Another day.

The Candle of Life

Have you listened to loons as they cry on the lake,
Or the laughter that children ‘round campfires make?
As clear as you hear them ‘cross lakes when they talk,
And deep in the forest where woodpeckers knock,
While frogs croak on lilypads out in the bog,
And fireflies glow in a thickening fog?

Remember that life is a candle that burns,
It lights all your pathways but never returns
Before it descends with all lessons it learns.

Have you ever gazed long at a butterfly’s flight
Or sat through the dusk and its darkening light?
Heard raindrops on tent tops fall quietly there?
Till fresh grows the dawn and its sweetening air?
Have you smelt the fresh scent that comes after the storm,
Or the fragrance of cottonwood seeds as they swarm?
To land in the glittering streambeds that flow
Where dragons chase skeeters for flying so low?

Remember that life is a candle that burns,
It lights all your pathways but never returns
Before it descends with all lessons it learns.

When you run through each day, eating lunch on the fly,
Do you ask “How are you?” Do you hear the reply?
Or do you race through the traffic on streets going dim,
Does the look on your face show that life is so grim?
And at night when you finally lie on your bed,
Are things of tomorrow still going through your head?

Remember that life is a candle that burns,
It lights all your pathways but never returns
Before it descends with all lessons it learns.

Has tomorrow arrived with that pledge to your child,
In your haste you forgot ‘twas the last day he smiled?
Did you ever lose touch, let a good friendship die,
Neglecting to call, and just to say “hi?”
Why wait for remorse that so nags you so deep,
That prayer to be spoken, a promise to keep?

Remember that life is a candle that burns,
It lights all your pathways but never returns
Before it descends with all lessons it learns.

A waste be this race to get you somewhere,
When most of the pleasure was traveling there;
So next time you hurry with worries each day,
Pursuing the odds that have little to pay,
For unopened gifts are like cheques never cashed,
And a life never lived for the treasures it stashed.

Remember that life is a candle that burns,
It lights all your pathways but never returns
Before it descends with all lessons it learns.

What Matters

O think my friend that all your life
You helped so many cope,
With lives so rife with added strife,
Now let me sent my rope.

For all we give that they might live
Their life with lesser care,
There seems no time for yours or mine,
That consciousness to share.

For you and I are much alike,
Although our lives diverse,
I share your fight both day and night,
As one who bears your curse.

But do not think that I will lose,
For winning this is prime;
As long as we’ve the right to choose,
The end will be sublime;

For you are cherished much to me,
Please do not quit the fight,
For if you do I’ll not subdue,
My heart of this sad blight.

So when you think you’re at the brink
Of all that’s left in you,
Don’t be distraught as if there’s not
The arms of He whose true.

Humility

How desp'rate do the egos fight,
They cannot give an inch tonight,
With sterile logic they delight,
Yet never hear what's said;

For wherein hearts do not feel dread,
They try to humble God instead,
For being wrong is worse than dead,
To all who think they're right.

The Human Prayer

Great Father of the Universe,
We do not know your name,
To us it was a thing to curse,
When passion did inflame
Our quest to vent the anger for
Things we perceived undone,
And we have chosen to ignore,
Where history had begun.

Great Father of our Universe,
We say that you exist,
Yet we persist in things perverse,
For we cannot resist
The cravings of our evil ways,
And play this stupid game,
Because we choose this haunting maze,
And will not take the blame.

Great Father of all living things,
We are the human race,
Who boast of making queens and kings,
Though bound by time and place,
And we can read and think and act,
And plant a future seed,
Yet all of this we will retract,
When we succumb to greed.

Great Father of the Human Race,
Though reason be our sleuth,
We chose no wisdom to embrace,
That we might learn the truth;
With logic we collaborate,
Yet evidence forestall,
For this we cannot penetrate
The structure of it all.

Great Father of the Human Mind,
Confusion is our voice;
To truth we have become so blind,
With recklessness our choice;
And basic are things unresolved,
Despite the swelling tide
Of all that we assumed evolved,
Within our stubborn pride.

Great Father of a World to Come,
Delay the death knell ring,
For all the damage we have done,
We brought its dreaded sting;
And only now we seek relief
From imminent despair,
These shadowlands of disbelief,
A curse we all must bear.

Great Father of our faintest hope
Restrain your dreaded light,
That follows darkness where we grope,
To just survive the night,
For all such light that is to come,
Will make us stand and stare,
And wonder why, when day is done,
Its distant solar flare …
Did fail to give just one more sign,
That we had failed to care,
That you had loved while we maligned
The reasons for this prayer.

O Macho Man

He wasn’t always Macho Man,
He wasn’t always tough,
For he was built without a plan,
And made of other stuff,
And while he tried to hide the tide
Of rising guilt and blame,
For all they saw were feelings raw,
A target, just the same;

The more he thought about his lot,
His face grew full of zits,
No friend to share or dare to care,
His life became the pits,
Till something died so deep inside,
He nevermore would frown,
For there he dreamed, and there he schemed,
To be the classroom clown;

All day at school, he was the fool,
For him they’d always jeer,
For they’d no better things to do,
Than tease him to a tear,
Till every day so far away,
He sat to eat his lunch,
And watched the guys with longing eyes,
While they sat in a bunch,

So what began to be the plan,
This loneliness of wit,
Could not erase the human face,
Surviving with the fit,
Such wounds of life, not salved by strife,
Cannot be healed by plan,
But they succumb to all their sum,
To be that Macho Man;

To hone this skill he changed his will,
And built his body strong,
And to extreme, he joined the team,
Of those who must belong
To all that ends with fearsome friends,
And bullies, lean and mean,
The outlaw crowd, that shroud the proud,
And all who dream the scene;

Yet I could see that none were free
Of what they had become,
For those bereft of what is left,
In mindlessness succumb
To stress, duress and emptiness
Of all they think is true,
But is for all a jaded pall,
Of nothing that is new;

Epilogue

Now how I yearn, my heart does burn
To help him to be free,
For I was him, now light is dim,
Soon dead men walk with me,
To little rooms that are as tombs
From where I cannot flee,
For I began as Macho Man,
And soon I’ll cease to be.

The Iceman

O listen to the iceman come,
He whistles merry songs,
He brings his sawdust-covered blocks
Of ice with iron tongs;
And how I loved that clippy-clop
Of horseshoes in the lane,
Because it was the time to rise
And brush ol’ Bessy’s mane;

It was in summer’s dawn I woke,
And lay there in my bed,
And waited for the wheels and hooves
On alleyways they tread,
Perhaps I was first to wake,
But then I could be late,
But still we always tried to beat
The iceman with his freight;

And we would race to be the first,
My brother, sis’ and me,
We ran and squealed and jammed the door
(As if it could fit three,)
And barefoot we ran down the stairs
And pranced on out to meet
A rolling wagon full of ice
Its tailgate was our seat;

Yes those were days the iceman came,
A time I’ll not ignore,
For those were days when dawn’s new air
Would drift in through the door,
The moment we would open wide
To let the sunshine in,
In time to see his wagon stop,
While he would wave and grin:

“Come on you children, grab a brush,
Ol’ Bessy needs a comb,
For she has worked so long and hard,
And now must take me home;
And when you’re done go in the back
To find the biggest gem,
For all the blocks are almost gone,
And there are lots of them.”

For all we wanted was a shard,
A sliver of that ice,
And fought the usual sibling fight
To get the bigger slice,

So with his tongs he grabbed a block,
And swung it like a sack,
He hiked the stair, the porch up where,
An icebox stood out back,
And there he dropped that crystal cube,
Where mom stored all the food,
While we ran off with frozen hands
To do things that were rude.

Now all these things I think about
On hot and sticky days,
Were memories loved when we were cool
And Bessy rode away.

The Boulevard

Remember when that whistle blew,
A distant, dreary call?
And brought commuters to their homes
As night began to fall?
But we remember running there,
Down by the railroad track,
To watch it travel from afar,
While Mother called us back;

She worried so, for we were young,
But we had no such fears,
How could she know that we would see,
Though distant grow the years—
Those iron couplings, clanking cars,
And wheels upon the rail,
O, how we loved its throaty call,
And steam that rose so pale,
That billowed ‘mid the twilight snow,
Descending through the night,
While cloudy mists made eerie twists,
And lights flashed very bright;

And as it came, so did its wail
To warn the bold and brave,
And children of the boulevard,
Who came to misbehave,
With eager hearts ‘neath unmowed grass,
Their chins upon their hands,
They lay in wait until it struck
Their stack of tins and cans;

And we, those children of the dusk,
Our eyes a misty glaze,
Began to wish that we had been
A passenger those days,
To travel on those distant rails
As skies began to glow,
To hear wheels click between the tracks,
While whistles faintly blow;

But now it’s just a distant horn,
From whence all heave a sigh,
And echoes from a renascence,
Which sends a last goodbye,
And while such things are commonplace,
With photographs that fade,
Yet somehow years add clarity,
While times gone by pervade
With long and grassy thoroughfares
Of tracks and chestnut trees,
And interurban trains that run
With all my memories,
While grass grows now so very tall,
Around the railroad tie.

Rightio gogh!