I almost made some unforgivable mistake— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
with Rose and my children.
Almost cut us loose from each other
to drift until the ends of our lives
and not know
what we could have been to and for each other.
When I see the hand of God move
I’m never sure which side or why
and the closer passes the stroke
the less anything
resembles what went before.
gallagher
1/20/86
Archive for 1986
1986-01-20
Monday, January 20th, 19861986-01-20
Monday, January 20th, 1986Rose, it gave me such a pleasure— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
to help with the children when you were sick today.
I know I wasn’t as much help as I could have been
fussing with the phone and the newspaper
but it made me realize what you do with them
like a farmer who digs his hands
deep into the soil that is his life.
You see them as life brimming, raw with promise.
A treasure of people just beginning.
A future world you can mother and comfort.
It was such simple pleasure to smile and hold them.
They saw my feelings and responded to me.
But you had already made that place
where I came to visit and open to them.
It was a day well spent and badly needed.
Somethings cut deeper than others
and you’ve found one, my lover, wife, and friend.
You nurture them and me in the sunshine
of your love and cherishing
and I see now
how you let God work through you.
gallagher
1/20/86 #2
1986-01-28 Challenger down
Tuesday, January 28th, 1986Challenger down— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
A look at our mortality again today.
Life and death, spirits and love, all together.
Something in me can almost grasp it, sometimes.
The faces and hopes of these people,
their purpose and joy, their lives and deaths.
Sometimes I think we’re here,
just cattle in God’s pens.
We move, we feel, we birth, we love
but still die for purposes
far beyond our small understanding.
The best of what we love and what we are
seem so intense and so transient, at once.
The best of us die without apparent purpose,
without explanation.
I can almost grasp it … maybe I will
before I am driven from the stage too.
I hope our choices and actions
are not just empty gestures
against death’s apparent caprice.
gallagher
28 Jan 86
Irvine