Archive for the ‘Catalyst2’ Category

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1978-10-14

Saturday, October 14th, 1978

Ah, Helen… sitting here this night…it finally came to me
how deeply you affected me.
Softened by acid and the hour …
my running steps have
finally come to ground.
I stopped to look at these poems
and to sort my feelings out
since you left.
And I found I’m a sadder man
for the loss of you.

I cried here and felt
so many feelings come rushing down
and that one hand came
and reached into my gut and twisted
and said, ‘grief’.
And even then I thought of you;
that only you could understand.

I read again the poems you wrote me
the night I slept and you lay awake.
Why is it I only seem to hear
what you said to me in retrospect?

Your patterns were running so fast,
I could only catch them whole in moments.
Your attempts to deal, were edging onto the abrasive.
And the pain under, was speaking so much
to confusion.
And I, the deaf Irishman,
was offering you only conditional relief.

But I see here, now, where you’ve past by.
My scars are plain to see

I got some aches inside me now from you
and these poems that leave me wondering what I believe
There’s so much that separates us logically,
perhaps I should let it lie.
But only you would know how that feels…to let it be that way.
This evening I cried for you … what more can I say.

gallagher
14 oct 78

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1978, Catalyst2, Helen O., Long Beach, Lucy's Diamonds | No Comments »

1983-01-12 On Sophies choice

Wednesday, January 12th, 1983 
                        On Sophie's choice

         Let me look ... let the light freeze just there
            on these love worn hands and new grayed hair
         softly now ... go and see your child
            go and look ... with your eyes that can feel and smile

         That your children, so loved, can die ... its unbelievable
            their small coats still buttoned up.
         And your wife, with her warmth at night
            and all those photograph albums shared
               and the cups she's dried with care
                  and the small wrinkles that seem to run
                     where once was young and fair.

         Go, my friend, and walk the house and touch the wood
            and sit among it ... your midnight kin
         and let the walls come round you ... and the moments wait
            while you think how frail, ...how frail is this love

         That a child, you've dressed for school can die,
            a bullet's glove, on a concrete step.
         And that the woman who's shared all those years
            can become just a statistic 
               in some foreigner's newspaper

         Some day these all, the child, warm wife, and wood
            could be torn from your page of life
         and your cups go broken ... and their skin grow cold
            while pitiless politicians
               vie for their intangible goods....

                                    Gallagher

                                    12 January 1983
                                       Dallas, TX

 

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1983, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Family, NZ Society of Authors, Poetry Collective, Texas | No Comments »

1983-03-12 – Rosemary; my mother’s sister

Saturday, March 12th, 1983

All these photograph faces swimming bye
moments captured forever.

They laughed at the camera so alive,
and yet they were 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 who loved,
someone whose blood flows in mine
someone with a lifetime of experiences
gone forever 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 mess.
I remember there was written on it
‘Via con Dios’ in someone’s handwriting.

And then there was Rosemary; my mother’s sister.

I felt grief when I read this child’s card,
who is dead now these 40 years
when she writes from the hospital
that she’ll be home soon
in a child’s scrawl.
But she never returned.

Barely begun … and then done.

And when I drop this card
into the trash,
washed away forever.

I threw that card away three times
and took it back again.

12 Mar 1983
San Juan Capistrano

 

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1983, Catalyst2 | No Comments »

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