Agates

Our discussion today was aging;

Waning interest in our collections…

The quest now to be less encumbered,

Means abandoning past obsessions.

What do we do with our agates,

Hoarded in jars, from the public’s reach?

Our unanimous moral decision

Was to toss them back on the beach.

Happy Hour at Sade's, Carmel

The song played at Sadie’s Happy Hour,

Was the most beautiful we’d ever heard.

“Non Si Vive Cosí” ,  by Iglesias;

Yet we didn’t understand one word.

All on the cusp of middle age,

At the end of our “Working Vacations”,

Our hearts ran free for one last night,

When life needed no translations. 

"Nobody can live like that anymore".  (Translation)
The lyrics warned, but none of us knew...
Thirty years later, each of us learned
Beautiful, sad songs are usually true.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNOW4StaLVo

Folk Songs

Our ethics discovered in folk songs,

We trusted they sang the truth;

Won battles blended from the past,

With fantastic new dreams of youth.

The lyrics of the protest songs,

Planted us firmly on solid ground…

We were bulldozers marching to freedom;

Elusive liberties, we've still not found.

Aging, defecting from the race,

It is time to pass the baton…

We drop it on to a vacant track;

Seems the values and dreamers are gone.

Sid and Sandi

Out of the blue, I missed you two,

Today on my usual drive.

Forty years, a thousand miles ago,

Only my memories now, still alive.

You welcomed me into the country,

Taught me all phases of tilling the land…

I learned to appreciate hardships,

The more simple the life, the more grand.

We readily exchanged our parents,

Horses, kids, ponds of fish and shared hay;

I gave up your adobe for waterfront,

Still I miss you the most each day.

A Promise Kept

Otis    RIP 1-3-2014

The day my name is entered

On the pages of St. Peter’s log,

You will see he wrote under “memo”,

“He came to look for his dog”.