Generations

hammer hard
gravel tread
gravity fed
down the chute.

chatter down
growl on down
splashing down
a hundred thousand board feet at a time.









When did I get soft hands?

Howling at the Moon

There was a time in my mis-spent younger days when I would have given anything to feel the sweet kiss of inebriated oblivion.

Seeking the semi-permanent numbness of alcoholic and drug induced haze was almost a full time job.

It's funny how much time I spent trying to forget everything.

And then I quit.

Told myself (and everyone else) that it was for health reasons.

But really it was just something I did.

Never understood why, or why I felt the need to lie about it.


But tonight by the waterside
crisp eventide summer solstice breeze
beached logs the size of cars
capering about the boulders
howling at the strawberry moon
with the only ones left who really matter
I came to understand.


Because, in the end, memory is all we have.

Because not all memories are bad.

Because sometimes, even the bad memories are sweeter with the passage of time.

Because I didn't want to rob myself of the only thing that any of us can ever really hold on to.

Fragaria Vesca

The shining sun
the green grass green
only a few of us
the ones who mattered.

Afternoon sun
sea salt air
light breeze rustled leaves
crows and smoke.


We dressed him in his suite.

His bowler on his chest
copper for his wrist
iron for his neck
and silver on his eyes.

We enclosed trinkets
poems
words
art.

Inside jokes and love and laughter and tears.
Hope for another life
a better life
far from this one.

We carried him
my sister and my brother-in-law and I
and the two grave diggers.

And we lowered him by hand
lowered him using ropes
because the plywood coffin didn't fit the lowering contraption.
And barely fit the pre-cast abs plastic liner.

Kind of like him.
Kind of like our family.
Never quite fitting this world of ours
or the pre-fabricated society we find ourselves in.

And we threw the dirt in on top
my young niece shoveling
shoveling for all she was worth
into the hand dug hole.


On Friday we buried my father on a hill
covered in green grass and wild strawberries.


He loved strawberries.

Goodbye dad.

In sorrow we must go, but not in despair.
Behold!
We are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.
― J.R.R. Tolkien ―