ONCE, I COULD FLY
Once I could fly,
Without a plane,
Unconstrained
By gravity, and
Unbounded by
Mother Earth.
I would soar like
A human eagle,
My arms wings,
My heart warm
And beating
Notes of joy.
High up in the
Cool air I was
Safe, lord of
All I saw as
I dived and
Banked, rose
And fell again,
Brushing close
To ground but
Never touching,
Then pumping
Winged arms
To reach far
Above trite,
Boring worlds
Whose creatures
Wore chains
Too heavy to
Let them fly.
Oh, how I loved
That time when
The child I was
Could fly every
Night in special
Dreams, or so
It seemed.
I suppose they
Really were not
So frequent,
Those nights when
I could jump off a
Roof or a cliff and
Know, truly know
I could sail the
Untamed winds.
But as I began to
Depart childhood,
My flying dreams
Grew scarce, and
Their glory less—
I would have to
Flap my arms,
Hard and hard
To gain any air,
And even so I
Could barely
Free my body
Of the heavy
And dull earth.
Then one day,
It was done,
finished, and
I had to walk---
to fly no more.
Yes, once I could
Fly, and whether
It came from some
Dim, dim memory
Of heaven or a
kid’s imagination
I know not—but
Seventy years past,
And still I long
To fly free again.
A Passing Glance
The other day
as I turned the corner
onto my quiet street
I saw a woman so perfect,
she snatched my breath away
as she waited to cross the road.
It was like seeing a movie star
or a beauty queen close-up--
my heart ached a bit, I confess,
when I thought, once, a long
while ago, I might have had a
chance….
But now I’m just an old man
driving an old car to an old house.
I drove slowly and could see
her gracefully crossing the street
in my rear-view mirror, much like
a dream fading quickly away…
suddenly, from somewhere far
beyond my mind, I realized
the truth of what I saw, and
it was all just stupid illusion--
She was young and beautiful,
I, old and lame, but those were
just markers on the wheel of time:
the wheel would turn,
my body would die, hers would age,
no longer enrapturing men-- in truth
she was already an old woman which
I could not see, nor could I see the
sweet child still playing within her.
When there are no more days left,
our souls will be free of the wheel,
and all the world’s illusions will
seem as distant, fading dreams….
THE POET AND THE DOCTOR
The poet and the doctor became friends late in life--
as old men they looked over the past in similar ways,
wishing their youth never ended, their work continued,
their lives again resplendent and filled with promise
as the one healed the body and the other the soul….
But Time is always Life’s master till Death frees both,
and so the doctor sent his patients away and the poet
lost his words, the words he tried to heal with, words
that sang and danced and played like carefree children.
The poet told his friend, the doctor, how he found his soul
whilst in the blackest part of hell, utterly alone, in pain
far beyond any pain the doctor ever treated, the forgotten
soul the poet found again when he threw his life away….
The doctor listened to his friend, the poet, but could not
or perhaps just would not believe-- he could not see
existence beyond mortality, nor purpose beyond chance.
The doctor was so wise as to be foolish, thought the poet,
and I, so foolish as to be wise?, he wondered to himself.
Ode To Mrs. Miller
I did not know how brave she was--
Ninety-two and I, seventy less,
So young that old age
Was textbook stuff:
A fact of life,
But not mine.
I was alive and free
To stride the world,
A colossus of youth—
Whereas she had ate
Almost a century.
And all her friends
And all her family
Lay dead somewhere—
Except in her mind,
Still crisp, poignant
In its memories
Of a wealthy husband,
A daughter dead young.
Her own youth and beauty
Remaining lonely in a
Silver-framed photo.
She never complained,
This old lady—
Never once did I hear
Lamentations, a bewailing
For the richness of life:
The ripe fullness she once felt
As a wife, a mother, a woman
Of grace and beauty.
She lived alone
In a basement flat,
Barely five feet tall—
Yet I’ve never known
Any being braver—
Yet it is only now,
When I am become old,
I envy such courage.
Living In a Dry Land
They who choose to live in a dry land
must live a very dry life--
too parched to sing, too dried out by what
they call ‘reason’ to see they have made
it hollow, a partial thing, a blind thing….
They have made their world so arid even
hope is scorched while the human is left
desiccated, no wetness left for good or
evil, not even for the inscrutable miracle
of love--
for in their sere minds all of life shrivels,
left scorched, withered-- burnt fragments
that were once honour, courage, faith--now
they see only an empty desert bounded by
death, extinction, nothingness….
A man once came to them, to that desert
their seared souls had made. He offered
them water, water to quench their thirst,
to moisten their minds, to make green
and lush once again their world, all done
with water, the holiest of water that would
lead them from a paradise to Paradise.
A few drank of the water, the water of
life and hope and awareness--
the water of Eternity--
but the others refused it, fearing the
man who brought it so much,
they killed him.
Two thousand years later,
some drink from His water of Life
and others choose a shrivelled life,
too dry for hope, too dead for any
meaning….
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