Now that Dad has been gone 15 years, I thought I’d share one of my favorite sides of him. He was a poet, among the many things for which we all loved him. These are just a few that I kind of remember as I cannot find the originals….
Son, with so much living to do
How much truth should I pass on to you?
Shall I tell you of my fears
That increase with passing years?
Shall I tell you of the love that disappears?
Shall I tell you of the pain
That my life has been in vain
Shall I tell you of the nights that end in tears?
Son, with so much living to do
How much truth should I pass on to you?
I will tell you of the joy
Just to know a little boy
I will tell you of the value of a friend
And this, most of all, my beloved son
I will tell you of a love that never ends
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As you can be, my daughter
Let my name be in your flesh
I gave you in the act of loving your mother.
All your days, her ways,
The woman in you
The way you came,
The days of waiting…
Be natural, daughter,
Wise, as you can be
Let the rhetoric stay with me,
Your father.
Let me now talk about it
Saving you
Such vicious self-exposure.
Larry Bales, 1976
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Night after lonely night, stretching into the future
They might have stopped at the moment of departure.
Yet which of us, in the grasp of unyielding love
Stops to think how long a moment can be
When that love is gone and who can really see
How empty life can be when emptied of love?
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I hope I picked up a little of his talent. Here are a couple of mine.
in the cold, dark sea
I am an alabaster dove
soaring innocent and free
I am a star, a diamond
beckoning in the night
I am a tiny dewdrop
glistening brave and bright
I am a prairie fire
smoldering in the sod
I am an idea
in the mind of God
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Where are you hid from me, beloved one
That I am seeking through the lonely world
A wanderer, on my way home to you?
Dark is the night, and perilous the road
At many a breast in longing have I leaned
At many a wayside worshiped
And my heart is tired
From long traveling
Perhaps, in centuries to come,
You wait for me
And are as yet, an iris by the stream,
Lifting her single blossom
Or the soft, tremulous haze upon the hills
And we have missed each other
If this should be
I say, if this should be,
Then let this song reach to the verge of doom
To find you where you are, my lonely one
Telling of one on a hopeless quest
How, in the dark of time,
She lost her way
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Nor can I express my torment of silence
All the words I had to say have become stars
An Icarus tries to rise as high as each of my eyes
And my spirit like a sun-god flames in the space between
What have I done to the tyrannical beasts of mind
At one time the dead came back to haunt me
And I hoped for the end of the world
But mine arrived whistling like a hurricane, without warning
I have had the courage to look back
At the corpses of my days
Which lay strewn in my path, and I mourn them
But I will set them quietly in their graves at long last
And begin to explore worlds outside myself
I feel the cool air brushing against my face
As I fling open the door and begin a new adventure
