Category: Life’s Lesson Poems

A  MAGIC MOMENT IN PRESCOTT PARK

 

The two kites are hovering over the river

The whale kite idly flipping its tail

As we watch grimy Bert in his cheerful endeavors

And pert Mary Poppins to chimney tops sails.

The children are everywhere darting and dancing.

We oldsters are finally starting to get it.

The message emerges, its meaning enchanting:

Anything can happen if only we let it.

Smiling, we make our way out of the park.

The sun’s eclipse is foreboding but brief.

We need not be afraid of the dark. 

Delight can follow after grief.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ON THE MOVE

We are not deeply rooted trees.

We are not meant to age in place,

Sentinels for centuries.

Descendants of nomadic tribes,

Our feet were made for trekking.

Our path to the horizon lies.

And when of Planet Earth we tire

We’ll launch ourselves in outer space.

To wider vistas we’ll aspire.

Until that cure for wanderlust

Comes with its promise of peace:

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

ADVICE TO GRADUATES

Fling open the shutters.

Pull up the blinds.

Look out the window

With wide open minds.

Reach for the stars.

Worship the moon.

Banish the darkness

From shadowy rooms.

Harness the sun

To flourish and grow.

We live but an hour

And then comes the snow.

ON GROWING OLD

Our latter years can be as gray

As many a tedious winter day.

The hours can be as hard to fill

As Sisyphus pushing a rock uphill.

We’ve learned what it is to love and lose.

To live this long we did not choose.

Some days it’s hard to get out of bed

And fill the empty time ahead.

On other days the sun will throw

A pink and orange sunset glow

Across the gray and gloomy skies

And we will come to realize

That like Frost’s snow-dispatching jay

Delight can come at the end of the day.

OUTLOOKS

Not every opening

Is a crevasse

A crack in the ice

An earthquake fissure

Or avalanche launcher.

There are breaks in the clouds

Job opportunities

A sermon’s first words

Clearings in forests

And strokes of good luck.

Whether the gate be

Elysian or Stygian

Depends on whether

The eye looks up

Or keeps to the ground.

ON PERFECTION

The moon was a crescent ornament

On the ebony curtain of night

Hung by a master scene maker

A mesmerizing sight.

I could not take my eyes off it.

It glued me to the screen

Too perfect for my mortal eyes

Unused to a flawless scene.

We need limits to our horizons

Some rain in desert climes.

Our heroes are not paragons

Nor our ointments without flies.

So I’ll welcome a cloudcast moon

And not expect heaven too soon.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

I take no little solace

From the thought of being free

Of crypt or tomb or coffin

When I cease from being me.

I do not want to molder

Underground or in an urn.

No, my elements should mingle

With the mosses and the ferns

Or perhaps make up an atom

In the branches of a tree.

How else can spirit wander

Blithely through eternity?

The Christian tale should teach us

That the tomb did not hold Jesus.

KARMA

I never planned a future.

I never envisioned a life.

A series of doors opened up.

Like Alice I scurried through them:

Accepted college tuition,

In Wyoming encountered a husband,

Spent two years in Lima, Peru,

Helped to erect two houses,

Taught English classes and reading,

Had five outstanding offspring

Who now keep an eye on me.

I did not pursue my destiny.

My star led me on like the magi.

ON DEPARTING

We should leave this life

In a burst of glory

Like a Roman candle

Or a red maple in autumn.

On fire is the way to go,

Then a handful of ashes

In the children’s flower beds.

No grieving over

Goldengrove unleaving

But the promise of spring

Buds unfolding.