Archive for the ‘Catalyst2’ Category

« Newer poems
Older poems »

1984-06-01

Friday, June 1st, 1984 
         Mists of time around me, sweeping.
           A lamp in the moving fog
              of some greater darkness, I.
         Impressions of progress and decay, fragmented
           small glimmers of understanding
              against the animal's short run.
         Film spliced, images racing, overlaid
           in bursts of light and shadow.
              But what cares the screen beneath.
         We run unarmed, to battles unwinable
           and our love's the only comfort taken
              and our small awarenesses
                 the only progress made.
         Death and pain and dissolution and decay.
           We are motes in the vortex of life's sink.
              Our children only a momentary reverse.
         Come the mists and darkness, I wait ...
           weathered and drawn in animal skin
              receptive to an unknown God.
         Rose and Danny and Chris
           and these lines on my face
              and those on these papers I've traced
         these are the only measures I can discern
           of what I've wrought
              in this time and mist and darkness.
                              gallagher
                              1 jun 84
                              Irvine, CA

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Chris, Dan, Irvine, Poetry as Meditation, Rose, Substack | No Comments »

1984-06-24 For the pictures

Sunday, June 24th, 1984 

                    For the pictures


   In the gray half light I saw the picture patterns she'd hung;
   imperishable for this moment, and so fragile for all the rest.
   Someday, I may remember these, that tonight I can see.
   Somewhere, down the imponderable paths our lives wind,
   I could be dropped into another world - far from this
   and Rose's pictures and Danny's manhood and Chris' cheeks
   may all be photographs and memories then ...
   indeed...we all will be, someday.


   So this moment ... I cannot stop it, cannot delay it
   and I cannot waste it, least I regret.


   So easy to lose it against hungers or moods or fatigue.
   The kindness and love we give and receive...
   it seems so mixed with the mundane and the trivial sometimes.


   But all the lessons of our lives wait before us;
   lessons from which no one escapes alive.


   What more could God give us than the people we love
   and the passion of living out our lives with them
   in family/friend chains of living change?


                           gallagher
                           24 jun 84

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Chris, Dan, Rose, San Juan Capistrano, Spiritual | No Comments »

1985-05-05

Sunday, May 5th, 1985 
      Sometimes like a vessel that just gets filled
      I have to stay up late and pay my bills.
      Open my heart all across the page
      and let the pains and fears and love come rage.
      Here, where the evening waits with me,
      my family's breathing is love indeed.
      And I'm here in a poet's home
      with dusty memories and my heart, alone.
      Oh, God, why did you give me these feelings here
      so I ache from love and the passing years.
      You gave me this vision and a hungry heart,
      so I'm a mystic, a lover, and a father; part.
      And here am I astride my years
      stumbling from blindness and my gaping fears.
      So, I bow my head and say, "Let the wind take all."
      I will seek the truth behind it all,
      even as I hear the sweet ground's call.
                              gallagher
                              5 May 85

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1985, Catalyst2, Family, San Juan Capistrano, Spiritual | No Comments »

« Newer poems
Older poems »