Sometimes small boy dreams float over me— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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
Archive for the ‘Rose’ Category
1983-02-28
Monday, February 28th, 19831983-03-12 My Great Aunt Nell
Saturday, March 12th, 1983My Great Aunt Nell— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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;
Thru 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
Followed brothers and sisters
thru births and deaths
thru first-hand knowledge
and 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 young
with a rebel’s spirit
clearly on his face
12 Mar 1983
San Juan Capistrano
1983-04-03
Sunday, April 3rd, 1983We talked about Bhagwan and religion today.— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —
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.