Ponds

Peaceful waters of the Sound

Lap the shores beneath my window;

The eagles screech, the herons honk,

Owls hoot in cautious innuendo.

Sometimes while basking in this beauty

I succumb to a heavy heart…

Missing the bullfrogs and the crickets,

The farm pond I loved from the very start.

Thirty Years/ Thirty Friends

Thirty years ago, thirty strangers

Descended on a coastal town…

All of us starting a new life

Checking off goals we’d each written down.

A new circle of friends drawn together,

Drinking gallons of wine on the beach,

Stumbled and fell on sand castles,

One by one, finding dreams within reach.

Thirty years later, the thirty friends,

Who loved their new lives so much…

Remembered their best years fondly,

While falling one by one out of touch.

Stephanie moved to Mexico,

Her husband and twelve others died,

The rest of us, in all walks of life,

Saluted those times and cried

The Bambi Complex

I was the subject of a family joke

Feeling the pain for sixty years…

“They had to drag me from the theater,

A little boy screaming in tears”.

The fear of losing all I love,

Lost security I’d never recover…

All occurred at the age of four

Witnessing the death of Bambi’s mother.

Exposed at such a tender age,

To adult’s cruel deeds and lies…

Left me still so unprepared,

For this lifetime of goodbyes.

Boston Bullies

Blueprints and Trade Offs

Life doesn’t come with a road map,

Nothing lasts, we only pay rent;

I built my life with limited tools,

To the specs of my own blueprint.

Wounded in bloodied fields of love,

Betrayed by allies I thought dear;

I walked away from the battlefield,

Trading war memories for beer.

Later years found me basking,

In beauty only an artist can paint;

Awaking to Technicolor sunrises

And a throbbing, chronic headache.

Paths

Neighborhood pals from childhood,

We shared pets, bicycles and skates…

Discussing our dreams in a backyard tent,

Confirmed us as best playmates.

Your Vietnam War and my years in school,

Provided a divisive wedge…

Separating our paths forever,

I floundered, you lived on the edge.

I read in the paper you married,

Had children, tried settling down…

I changed careers repeatedly

Moving often, from town to town.

The present time finds us survivors;

We've a plethora of stories to tell…

Both alone now in two separate places,

Different paths followed, yet both parallel. 

It's a shame past youth's not a magnet,

Magically drawing old friends near…

Sharing a tent behind “The Home”,

Discussing things old men fear.

Esquire Wars / Viva Vidal!

I was a brash senior in high school;

William F. Buckley fired the first round…

Gore Vidal sued and fought back,

Esquire magazines sold out in town.

Smack in the middle of the Esquire war,

Critics deemed Gore Vidal out of luck…

Until the moment he told Mr. Buckley,

You can shoot a gun when “You’re too fat to f&@k”!

I may have lived more pedestrian

Had I never read Palimpsest…

I believed no more in the status quo

And never settled again for less.

Another intellectual falls,

Into the abyss of a hero’s lost words…

Gore’s thoughts far too heavy to carry

Spread like dropped feathers of migrating birds.