Embracing Your Fear

I’ve always been good at making an entrance

   never choosing to stay

 

I’ve always been good at passing through

most often forgetting the day

 

I bypassed adulthood, becoming a child

as your legions mocked and jeered

 

And answered those voices calling out of the wild

—embracing everything you fear

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)

My Heart Still Chimes

Poor in stock but rich in spirit,

my clock does bow and sway

 

In rags and tatters all unstitched,

with joy do I still pray

 

My flesh is weak, my home now burnt

just embers to remind

 

That within this trouble and burning ash,

on the hour

   —my heart still chimes

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)

‘You Did Make Me Love You’

I was twenty,

and you were nineteen

that day along the mall

 

When I heard a guitar

from deep inside

that round auditorium hall

 

Up on stage with legends

Son House, Muddy,

Johnny Winter too

 

A red haired, freckle faced,

blue eyed girl

commenced to sing the blues

 

You started with an apology

saying you were outclassed

and over matched

 

But once that voice

left your heart and flew

….in nothing did you lack

 

I followed you out

that afternoon

in the late State College Fall

 

And after fifty years of looking back

every moment

I recall

 

I walked you to the bus

as you said:

“We’re in Harrisburg tonight

 

“Why don’t you come,

it might be fun

from there I catch a flight”

 

The bus was full,

my eyes looked south

as I hitchhiked down #322

 

Fate unexplained

life forever changed

—that special gift from you

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2018)

Emptiness Sublime

Silence often defines the verse

its music between the notes

 

The freedom to breathe, the moment to grow

fertility bespoke

 

Space may be perfect with nothing penned

to fill or then divide

 

Quiet and silence never the same

—true emptiness sublime

 

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2018)