Vigil for a Best Friend

I sat as you lay dying tonight,

Waiting for your last word…

It was in the end, a faint weak gasp;

The only sound I heard.

I hoped to find some wisdom;

A revelation in that last breath…

It was exactly as you’d warned me.

There is nothing after death.

Wonderful Failure at Love

Remembering past relationships,

Wishing who I was with, still yet…

I faced a bitter reality;

It was someone I’d not yet met.

I recalled sad songs and memories,

While envisioning their faces…

So many successes without them,

In incredibly beautiful places.

Blue Moons

There was international interest,

One day while pruning my hedge…

I bent over to pick up the clippers;

A jet just missed my head, house and ledge.

An earthquake tossed bricks in Seattle,

A subterranean geological shift...

Land rose and sank before my eyes,

All my doors and locks suddenly fit.

There were winds and power outages,

No heat in cold dark rooms,

That sparkled in the brightest light

From the radiation of full moons.

The graceful pontoons throwing mist,

While landing in my front yard,

Illustrate the days well sailed

Compared to bad memories we discard.

Every rare blue moon rising

Turns another calendar page.

All the quirks of island living

Write the chapters as I age.

I’ve hunkered down in hurricanes,

Trembled in earthquake fear…

Updated my obituary

Then lived another year.