When
replaces if
in words written
and words said
with some facility.
When
replaces if
not as a certainty
nor as a guarantee,
no fait accompli.
When
replaces if
as a sign of hope
a challenge,
a possibility.
But when,
oh when,
will when
replace if
in reality.
16 August 2012
SW 782 CLE-BWI
Filed under Poem
Surfing through images,
electronically stored on my computer,
an image –
slightly more than a year old –
of a friend whose song ended too soon,
surprised me.
Sadness tugged my heart,
sorrow filled me;
thanksgiving surged,
gratitude flowed;
a tear and smile
as feelings and memories intermingled,
contradicting,
enhancing,
playing off each other.
Surprise is hard.
Surprise is good.
Surprise is life.
12 August 2011
Cleveland Heights, OH
with thanks to Kathy Lueckert
Filed under Poem
Love wins.
Love always wins.
Do the people
watching their friends perish,
wasting away from hunger,
leaving their children by roadside
unable to carry them,
deciding who will eat
and who will die,
on the Horn of Africa
experience that affirmation?
12 August 2011
Cleveland Heights, OH 44121
Filed under Poem
Hard it is
to be a saint in the city;
harder still, perhaps,
mid the noise and the bright lights and the traffic,
to be a firefly
that is seen in August.
5 August 2011
Shire on the Hudson
Filed under Poem
Forever he will wonder
how his life might have changed
had he chose to turned back that day and stay –
or if not to stay –
at least to say what was in his heart.
Now, years later,
each night he lies awake,
in the small hours of a morning,
delightful images dance in his mind as he
invents scenarios of what might have been.
Yet in some of those still, small hours,
before he reluctantly surrenders to sleep,
he grudgingly concedes
that greater joy no doubt lies in in his imagination
than would have been realized through other choices.
4-5 August 2011
SW 163 MDW – LGA
Shire on the Hudson
Filed under Poem
Do you know
what fills my mind,
what shimmers in my heart?
Do you know
what I think,
what I feel?
Do you know
what I bear,
how much I care?
Do my deeds reveal?
Do my actions show?
Do you know?
4 August 2011
SW 163 MDW – LGA
Filed under Poem
Like a green shoot of vine
that wraps around a stone,
clinging patiently until the rock cracks,
there are people who,
seeing something, sensing something in me
beyond my comprehension,
choose the path of relationship,
tenaciously engaging me
until my heart cracks
and they become a part of me
forever.
4 August 2011
SW 163, MDW – LGA
Filed under Poem
Seat 21-E sits empty beside me,
on this nearly full flight,
provides
space:
space to spread out and relax,
space to enjoy the company
of whomever I call to mind.
4 August 2011
Midway Tarmac
Filed under Poem
Filed under Poem
Waiting in line to buy
junk food I did not need,
I was more than a bit befuddled to hear
the young clerk wonder:
“Would you rather have
love or money?”
It seemed a most out-of-place
inappropriate query to pose to
an absolute stranger who only wanted
a candy bar filled with sugar and calories
that would do me no good.
As I stood searching for
a response that seemed witty –
or someone germane –
or at least not totally inane,
she spoke again.
“‘Would you rather have
love or money?’
That’s what she asked.
And I said:
money!
Love is too stressful.”
My disorientation deepened.
Who was this mysterious woman
who posed to my clerk the question?
And what was going on?
Was she expecting a response from me?
From the guy stacking the shelves?
From someone I failed to see?
Was she practicing a soliloquy:
preparing to audition for some part
that might forever transform her life?
I’ll never know.
Silently I took my change
and stepped toward the door,
but on the way,
a thought – unsaid, but still recalled,
filled my spirit, mind, heart:
love brings stress; it’s never easy–
commitment, compromise, costs.
But what of the stress,
and what of the costs,
and what of the loss,
of the utter, empty barrenness
of living without love?
2 August 2011
Gate B-19, MDW
Filed under Poem
Along the Graybeard Trail 