The Norm (Norman Sydney Marlow)

I think of you most every day,

How excited you would be…

The things our computers do now;

You so loved technology.

It is almost science fiction,

Life now, since you’ve expired…

The revelations I could show to you,

Touch tablets, no longer wired.

Before the acme of your visions,

You prematurely passed away,

“Does it matter what you do not know”?

I ask while missing you today.

Perspective Lines

I spent my youth on horseback,

Chasing the distant horizon line,

Where fence posts and barbed wire

Touched down in a world beyond mine.

I chased power poles in the city,

Where the wires met the street,

Never realizing until my middle years,

The world is round, we’ll never meet.

Older now, I live on the ocean;

No longer focusing on sunsets,

I’ve learned those waves coming towards me,

Are life, and as good as it gets.

My Life on Hold

The people I loved, I love,

The songs I sang, I sing.

The beauty I saw is beautiful,

Losing nothing is everything.

Embarrassing moments, laughable,

Where I once fled, I won’t go away…

Time could never move fast enough,

I’d give anything now, to stay.

Prairie Fins

Across the vast Dakota plains,

Where the horizon never ends…

We sailed over the prairie flats,

Propelled by General Motors’ fins.

The tank was filled with ethyl,

The trunk laden with Bali Hai…

A glove box full of cigarettes,

Our goal was “New Orleans or die”!

Our first stop was in Miller,

We had no money for a room,

A motel gave us each a paint brush,

And a single bed till noon.

We painted until Thanksgiving;

The travelers snowy roads forgot…

Chewed the pheasant very carefully,

“This bird’s loaded with buckshot”!

That month we made a profit,

All blown on strangers in a bar;

When you’ve spent a week in Miller,

Life says “Turn around the car”!

Now looking back in retrospect,

In the mirror, and 40 years older…

I picture the Buick, aged like me,

Still running, but nearing the shoulder.

Abandoned

All of my neighbors are missing.

One is visiting New York State…

Others have left their vacation homes,

Rentals left empty to renovate.

I walk with Otis, alone in the dark,

Among owls and wild wolf dogs…

The only sounds, the howling wind,

And storm tides tossing up logs.

Their absence makes no difference,

I’m helpless in this bad dream…

The artists would be preoccupied,

Others too deaf, to hear me scream.

Better now...everyone is back!