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 —