SamadhiMuse

             I must have been happy these months
               I’ve not picked up a pen to write
                  more than 2 or 3 times
             Christopher has been born,
               I’ve bought a condo in Capistrano,
                 I’m getting a computer of my own,
                   and I’m staying right physically
                     and Rose, … Rose has been Rose for me
             A baby … now I know how to love a baby!!!
               Baby smiles are simpler than trust
                 just as touching a baby
                    is more than being careful
             I used to think babys were too simple
               to be interesting
             but I don’t think so anymore
               and I don’t care why
                 Christopher, … just smile for me.
                              gallagher
                              10-13-80

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Another time…another moment
           with indelible written on it
           the strobe flash of recognition
         amid the mindless progressions of moments…the day to day.

         A lifetime’s change point bridging time and insignificance
           it brings to ground against the quiet paper.

         I run so hard most times and think so little
           our world’s going to hell in a hundred ways
         and my loved ones and I wait near naked against its caprice
           nothing so precious here as their moments and their love
         and so much seems to escape me
           so much.

                                    gallagher
                                    14 Feb 1981

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Sometimes I go so deep within myself
           and see so shallowly into others
         as if I was the only one who felt
           or imagined
              or rejoiced
                 or thought.
         Clear my eyes that I might see
           the wondrous child that lives within each of us
              and cross the bridges that words and relationships
                 can never span.
         That deep something that burns
           deep inside of each of us
         amid doubt and habits for only the certain touch
           of another who’s awake … and cares.
                           gallagher
                           18 July 81
                           SJC

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

          I reach for my feelings
          and try to give them form in words
          to capture the moments
          when I rise above the stream of my life’s history
          and gaze with horror or rapture
          on the forms I’ve invested my life in.
          Less these days do I rise…
          so tight have drawn the habits
          of the things and the people I love.
          There’s no measure
          by which my life is not adequate
          and yet, somewhere inside,
          I still turn restless
          wanting the ice water shock of everything new
          that maximum becoming
          that must arise from starting as nothing.
          The love is not so bad these days…Rose and my children
          I’ve never been more blessed
          and she, she loves me enough
          to let me have my time and space alone.
          More these months I turn restless against my work
          I remember realizing sometime ago
          the difference between
          the absorption of creativity
          and the mire of baroque detail.
                                 gallagher
                                 21 September 1981
                                 sjc

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Our lives are made fragile by the things that we love
           and the years our love brings to bear.
         Chris lay sleeping as I prepared to leave
           and I stood and stared thru the bars of his crib.
         He loves me to tickle him and his eyes shine as he squeals
           and he can say ‘Da-dee’ and does, again and again.
         Some place from far back inside of me
           as I looked watching him sleep
         I thought of how fragile are all of our lives.
           The patterns of security, comfort and association we erect
         against these wars and illnesses, crimes and disasters…
           none of them are less real, because we love.
         Its just that my perception
           of how life and its vagaries comes together
         with our love and its attachments
           has sharpened with age.
         As the blunders of youth’s mania
           and other distortions fall away
         and I see the ‘human condition’ more,
           and I cringe at how naked we stand.
         But Chris didn’t know … even that I was leaving
           his blankets and thumb and baby fat warmth
              defined the world he knows.
                                    gallagher
                                    29 Nov 1981
                                    LAX, Vancouver bound

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                     Long time sleeping
            Sometimes I lay awake at night
               and my thoughts just crawl like liquid snakes
            and my life seems to pass in front of me;
               the waste, the traps, and the mistakes.
            I remember all the years like snapshots
               when Rose and I were younger
            and the images and dreams turn inside of me
               like hopes; my wishes, my friends.
            I lay awake and ache for
               just how terribly little I’ve learned
            that our once simple love like children
               is now the colder love of just friends
                              09-22-82

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                       Sometimes I wish, I need…
              Sometimes I want to just wake her
               and say “Hold me, make it go away.”
             All this age and dissolutionment
               the aches that words can’t say
             But we sleep in bed like strangers
               and the night seeps between us like death
             and I’m afraid that if I awaken her
               she’ll be annoyed and have nothing to say.
             So I lay and quietly twist
               while snapshot memories
             crawl over me like worms
               and the night waits endlessly
             against my need
               and my stomach whispers of
                  its little boy fears.
                                 gallagher
                                 22 sep 1982

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         “I’m insecure.”, I said, and she came and held me.
         She’d been telling me of her boy friend at work
           and the story of what they’d been thru these past weeks.
         My heart had crept from its shell to stare
           and my questions quivered to be calm and even
              as they followed her there.
         She had been unhappy to share in his lies and deceits
           and had said that if he was unhappy
         that he should leave his wife
           and then she and he could conduct themselves
              straight and fair.
         But when he took her advice his wife, driven to far,
           tried to take her life and thus held him there
         and, now, he and Rose are ‘just friends’
           across the quiet bridge of his despair.
                                       gallagher
                                       20 October 1982
                                       sjc

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

               The Winds of War
      The winds of war and I can feel the sinews of time
         about to rip from their anchors
      children, customs, love, forms, history, memory
         torn thru every part, across every line
      Here a picture of Poland’s jews
         a wedding day the day before Germany invades
      I remember a museum… a few books… black and white photos
         of people in black clothes and funny hats
            all gone, all gone
      neighborhoods, blocks, buildings, families, marriages
         children, furniture, clothes, books, records, memories
            all gone
         but for these isolated pieces in the museum
                                 02-06-83
                                 SJC

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                           Gerda’s Knife
      I watched ‘Winds of War’ on TV and then turned out the light
         And, on the stairs, in the dark, ascending
            I saw your father’s knife as it hung in your bedroom.
      Its white metal patient these many years
         since another sun shown on it
            in the days of the German Reich.
      I could hear flags whipping, red and black,
         against the green of trees
            and the gray of building stones
      and, for a moment, felt the eyes of countless men
         as their hands caressed its handle’s symbol
            and reveled in the power and purpose of a God given cause
      and then, these many years later, through chances too rare to say,
         I came and found it there in your room
            waiting patiently through all my childhood and travels
      A time machine from another land
         another time
            that almost changed my world
      I look at old photos, black and white,
         and so much time seems too stand between me and those images
            but with your father’s knife
      I could hear the flags whispering
         in the crisp air of that unique time
            and feel their dreams across the years
                                    GALLAGHER
                                    7 Feb 83
                                    San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         Sometimes small boy dreams float over me
            camping trips not taken, rocks not polished
         days spent walking around someone
            who will so quickly grow and move on
         someone whose young disappointments
            were only my laziness
         baseball, racquetball, model building, Mexico
            and he grows so well
               in spite of all I’ve forgotten
                  to do.
                              gallagher
                              02-28-83

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                  My Great Aunt Nell
         I’m time tripping in a very different way tonight.
         My Great Aunt Nell McGee was over for dinner
         and I pulled out the old boxes of photographs
         that I was never able to face
         after my mother passed away.
         Mixed there were my mother’s collection
         and my Great Aunt Mame’s.
         Things that ran from Rose and I, three years ago,
         to my Great Grand Parents;
         Pennsylvania farmers and Irish immigrants.
         Even now I sit among these beautiful people’s
         pictures, long gone.
         But when my Aunt was here, it was different.
         Through her eyes, I saw my mother at 17,
            young and fresh and pretty,
         and my Grandfather as a young blade,
            with wit and intelligence
               engraved so clearly on his face.
         I followed brothers and sisters
            throughu births and deaths;
               through first-hand knowledge
                  and through things just heard.
         She put names to faces fifty years gone
            and I felt them as they were.
         I saw my Father, briefly,
            some ghost image who came into
         and out of my Mother’s life
            in a camera’s blink of time.
         I saw myself, as little Chris is today,
            when my Grandfather was old
         and I saw my Grandfather’s youth
            with a rebel’s spirit
               so clearly on his face.
                        12 Mar 1983
                        San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

         All these photograph faces swimming bye
            moments captured forever
         then…now.
            They laughed at the camera
         so alive, and yet so frail
            compared to these paper traces
               they’ve left.
         Each one I throw away hurts.
            I think, that with a motion,
         I may be disconnecting the last memory
            of someone.
         Someone who loved,
            whose blood flows in mine
         a lifetime of experiences
            gone now
               because no one remembers their name.
         I threw away a weathered envelope,
            circa 1920, whose contents had been lost
               in the photograph box’s general melee
         and I remember there was written on it
            ‘Via con Dios’ is someone’s handwriting.
                              12 Mar 1983
                              San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

          - Rosemary, my mother’s sister -
         That all our small wishes and dreams
            be driven from the stage
               like sand before the storm.
         Should we hold the echos or
            let them go?
         I feel grief when I read this child’s card,
            whose dead forty years,
               when she writes
                  she’ll be home soon
                     in a child’s scrawl.
         Barely done … and when I drop the card
            washed away forever.
            I threw the card away three times
               and took it back again.
                              12 Mar 1983
                              San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

             Rosemary, my mother’s sister
         That all our small wishes and dreams
            be driven from the stage
               like sand before the storm.
         Should we hold the echoes or
            let them go?
         I feel grief when I read this child’s card,
            whose dead forty years,
               when she writes
                  she’ll be home soon
                     in a child’s scrawl.
         Barely done … and when I drop the card
            washed away forever.
            I threw the card away three times
               and took it back again.
                              12 Mar 1983
                              San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                  For Chris
         Chris’ small shoes
            He says, ‘Read my book, Daddy.’.
         Hold me, tickle me….
            Where else have I seen
               those child’s eyes?
         1913, 1930, 1950, …
         He’s so precious
            the moment so brief
         I want to cry and read him
            his book
         before we all become photographs
         God, life is beautiful
            and so short
         and we are such utter fools
            in the midst of it most times.
                           12 Mar 1983
                           San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            We talked about Bhagwan and religion today.
               She thinks I’m crazy but without malice.
            I tried to make the point that he is to religion
               what ‘One World’ is to nationalism
            Somehow its only the Rolls Royces everyone sees
               and I had to confess I don’t understand
                  that part myself.
            I told her that if I couldn’t get time off
               I would quit my job to go this summer
            and she couldn’t fathom how something
               I’m so inactive in
                  could be so important to me.
            I said that in my priorities only she
               and the kids came higher.
            I tried to ask her how she would feel
               if somehow she had come to believe
                  that Christ had returned…
               would it change her life,
                  that He was existing, available,
                     in our society?
            Would it change mine?
               I’m still trying to find out.
            I’m going to go again in July and
               join the Buddhafield.
            Open my heart and eyes to the storm
               of history around this man.
                           Gallagher
                           3 April 83
                           S.J.C.

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

      Lying there beside her, I smell her skin, the warmth of her
         I see, or imagine, in the gray light, the wrinkles
            I’ve put there and I feel the storm of our lives
      She’s told me her period’s wrong and that her breasts hurt.
         For months we’ve tried to conceive
            and come to this.
      I put my hand on her back beneath the covers
         intimate against her sleeping
            I would know her skin anywhere.
      I begin to feel age and our mortality.
         Even now my body says I press too hard
            that I cannot become what I once was.
      And she who grows more precious to me each year
         grow more ripe for He who reaps us all.
            I touch her back and feel her breath … this moment.
                              Gallagher
                              3 April 83, SJC

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            Sometimes when I think of her it’s with love
               and sometimes it’s with sadness.
            I see another dreamer
               fallen over the edge where dreamers go
                  when they feel their dreams slipping away
            and I wonder what I can do for her, save give love
               and even there I wonder
                  if its kindness or pain I bring.
            That spirit she keeps so deeply hidden within her
               craves love as the touchstone
                  in this world grown aged and dreamless
            but I have only the form of love to give
               not the substance
            and in the end I may open her heart
               just to leave it bleeding.
            She smokes and drinks so casually now
               pulling the bricks from the temple of her body.
            It passes the time
               and dulls
            that dreamless clarity she hates so
            my water sister, my lover,
               what can I do for you?
            Where you seek security
               I have only this love by appointment
            and where you crave deep purpose
               I have only this poetry.
            I can listen and share with you
               but, in the end, I cannot replace
            your dreams with mine
               nor share the wellsprings
                  of joy in my life with you.
            I understand well your feelings
               but like a man on the other side of a glass wall,
            I can do no more than press the barrier
               that separates our true selves
            and look with compassion and empathy
               as you struggle with your life
                  and care very deeply
                     if you win or loose.
                           gallagher
                           25 june 83 - about Kathleen A.
                           SJC, CA

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            July in conjunction,
                     node on the run
      Somedays just seem to be conjunctions
         wring you out and test you functions
      comes the ticking of the clock
         calendar pages…
            the motion just won’t stop
      And its here that things collide
         you’re forced to tell the truth…or lie
      its here you come to find the blame
         moments cross like arrows in flame
            you can’t remember your name
      you can feel the days are walking’
         expectation/promises talkin’
      and you know you’re going to fall
         you can here you echos call
            your appointment’s up against the wall
      so you wait …
         so you wait …
      and listen to the murmur of your fears
         the empty moments shocks are near
            and it ALL becomes so clear
      you’re here again at the crossroads
         you couldn’t let it alone
      and now you’ve planned the future’s coming’
         but someone else is coming home…
            but someone else is coming home…
                        gallagher
                        7-29-83  - about Kathleen A.
                        SJC

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —