Archive for the ‘San Juan Capistrano’ Category

« Newer poems
Older poems »

1984-04-29

Sunday, April 29th, 1984 


           Today I was shaving
           and putting in my contacts
           and Chris sat on the sink watching
           like he's done a lot this last two months.

           Suddenly, from this random behavior,
           came pattern and purpose.
           if I were making a fire or tanning leather
           or stringing a bow or gathering herbs
           there...it was...

           there he would sit, receptive
           to what he would need to live;
           the transmission of learning
           parent to progeny.

           Wolf cubs, seals, monkeys and man
           all the same...small eyes learning.

           And in our plastic electronic world
           where this has little validity
           the instinct still lives.
           he looks to me to show him the way.

                        gallagher
                        apr 29, 84
                        San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, Catalyst, Chris, San Juan Capistrano | 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 »

1984-07-29

Sunday, July 29th, 1984 

      There she sits…with a son signed up for Christ
      and husband lost in mystic irrelevance
      and another son still growing,
      God knows what he’ll become.
      She’s from the simple small town people
      and she just wants to draw a circle around us
      with the family gathered inside
      full of babies and love and our years together.
      It must seem like its all unraveling to her sometimes
      that those she loves don’t find her dreams enough,
      aching wait… “Will they all leave me?
      Can what I believe in  be so unimportant to them…?”
      Tiring through the years, her passions run shallower now
      her ex-husband no longer some magic against the future
      but just a long swell of disappointment
      a wave that passed into a slowly ebbing dream…
      a slowly ebbing dream …
      and her son, her son reborn in Jesus,
      her baby, at fourteen.
                        gallagher
                        29 jul 84
                        Irvine

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, Irvine, Rose, San Juan Capistrano | No Comments »

« Newer poems
Older poems »