After a certain point . . . when? . . .
it seems we age at different paces.
See Parkinson’s effect on Don:
scientist, revered professor,
he struggles to say hello
or even hold a fork.
Then there’s dementia—
see what it’s doing to Jan:
once a nurse in the military,
her sweet smile belies her absence.
Supporting them in countless ways,
their spouses hover, preventing a spill,
stopping a fall, pulling them halt-
ingly into our conversations.
Granted some uncertain reprieve,
the rest of us reside in a separate…
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When dating, I’d love to watch my partner
drop her credit card from her tanned hands
and attract the male Spanish-speaking servers.
She’d get frustrated they skipped her
Hawaiian name’s too-many successive vowels.
She’d adjust her inherited Hawaiian jewelry,
declaring her identity and anger at them
for jumping to connection with her Spanish last name
and not knowing Pelayo is Spanish from the Philippines.
Oh the struggle of mixed-race names
the ones that have stories behind them,
stories that are never read.
I loved her frustration, that impotence
you feel at being unheard but loved.
Love that makes it impossible to complain.
When we married, she took my last name,
hyphenated ethnicity and confusion.
With the added punctuation, she became
less of an individual
more connected to me.…
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You walk the beach at Nazaré
and carry for your granddaughters
the shells and pebbles they’ve discovered –
each a treasure – until, hands full,
the girls must now decide again
which to save and which to return.
Walking, stooping, passing judgment,
they assay each piece, then keep
or toss or simply leave it in the sand.
For you, time’s the treasure – moments
measured by these pebbles and shells.
Climbing closer all the while,
massive waves break, run,
and tease the girls’ feet with foam.
This tide keeps an ancient time –
past without beginning, future
without end, indifferent to hands
full of precious moments, gifts
from these children just for you,
grandparents treasuring time.
– Douglas Twells…
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For my brother, one of the old stock who plays guitar and sings
What will happen when all of the real men are gone? The ones who can build, install, plumb, lay, and fix all manner of things with their own two hands – a dying breed of the old stock, they say. What will happen when all of the real men are gone? Will no buildings be built, no cars fixed, no oil changed, no lights installed? Everything broken and in disarray? What will happen when all of the real men are gone? When finally all of the hammers grow rusty, the wood rotting from their handles for lack of use. When nails fall from our shelves, and we just sweep them out into the ground for we know not what they’re for or from where they’ve come.…
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Let’s say you’re on your last thin string
of hope your kids are hungry
you’ve lost
your minimum wage job with no benefits
your 2006 Chevy needs a new muffler
two rear tires an o-ring
for the oil
leak and your left wisdom tooth aches like hell
Your string of hope frayed and a little wet
is in your pocket one early spring
morning
as the sun rises on the first robin you see
Let’s say you smile Let’s say you feel
the face of the world slowly turning toward you
so you
warm your hands on a cup of tea and begin to sing
– David James
Author’s Note: I wanted to write a poem of hope since I found myself writing mostly “end of time” poems as I got older.…
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it’s raining rats and dogs
or ferrets and hampsters,
carp and salamanders—
hell, you know what I mean, a hard rain
smacking the windows and grass,
pooling into mini-lakes in our back yard.
the sump pump, my hero,
is working on a fifteen second rest cycle.
i guess we need it, it’s spring and all,
flowers and bushes and trees taking in the rain
to create, again, our garden of Eden
minus the apple tree which we cut down
with the full knowledge
it was dying. a mercy kill. but it’s stuck forever
in my memory of this place
which we call home, for now.
there’ll come a time
when we’ll have to sell, when this house
will be a burden
we can’t manage, and some new family will move in,
two kids and a dog, and the house will wrap its arms
around them, and it will become their home,
not ours.…
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I’d been expecting her Uncle Pat to come
meet me and when I pulled open the door,
there he stood, filling the door frame,
big enough to blot out the sun,
made even taller by black alligator boots
dulled by the south Texas dust still clinging to them
and a black Stetson
sitting centered above a wind-weathered face.
He didn’t bother coming across the threshold.
Just took off his hat and said
Hi, I’m Pat Shannon
in a voice like a Memphis blues man and
an accent that was 4th generation San Antonio.
You the one going to marry my niece?
a question punctuated by one raised eyebrow.
Yes, that’s right, sir.
Now he stepped into the room,
came close and crooked a smile.
Well good for you.…
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