Archive for the ‘2008’ Category

« Newer poems

2008-04-22 – Dreaming of my sons

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 

This morning, I returned from Starbucks 
and the house was quiet
so I lay down in the bed in the guest room 
and gathered the pillows against me.

I found myself dreaming of my older son, Dan, 
and he was small, perhaps five.

He was standing on a stool 
and we were talking about something together
and, in a moment of my inattention, 
he toppled off and fell on the floor.

I picked him up, scared that he was hurt, 
and stood him on the stool again
and held him 
checking to see if he was OK.

I whispered to him that he was brave 
and that he was my very special son
and how very much I loved him 
and always would.

I told him he was growing up so fast 
and that soon he'd be 17
and grown into a man 
and that this time of ours was so precious
and I hugged him against me.

And then, as so many times before, 
I awoke surprised and saddened
to find myself 
decades into the future.

The smell of his hair, the fineness of his skin, 
the trust in his eyes,
the warmth of holding him 
and the simple and profound love of that moment
were still there, as a warmth, filling me 
though he's grown now and almost 40.

I've had this dream, or something very similar, 
many times about both my boys.
Always the love, the the treasuring 
and then the awaking and the sadness.

I treasure these secret up wellings 
of my heart's past;
these deep emotional memories 
that bind me to these boys - now men.

I would call them and tell them what I dreamt, 
but I fear they'd think me
an emotional old man having a maudlin moment 
in the midst of their busy lives.

So, I'll leave these words here 
in my collection of poetry and thoughts
and, perhaps, someday, they will find them 
and share this moment with me, then.

A moment so very precious 
and present to me now
and yet so very lost and ephemeral 
in the curtains of time.

                                                 gallagher
                                                 22 Apr 08

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 2008, Dan, Monroe, People, Poetry Collective | No Comments »

2008-06-21 – Under Many Stars

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

Here,
amid the weeds
of these centuries,
I rise.

Seeking light and warmth
from the soils and seas
of yet another world.

The long rise;
the single cell, the multiple.

We spawn;
fleet of form and bright of eye.

We gather and rise
in complexity and imagination
beneath another wheeling sun, above,
and the shifting plates, below.

Again and again,
we come to self-consciousness.
Spewing poetry and conquest,
cities and literature.

Proud and driven,
we sing the animal’s song …
but in a higher key;
as we procreate, build and consume.

And it is always the same rise …
and always the same fall,
just … beneath a different star.

We are technological children,
impulsive and uncontrolled,
pressed onward by those same
biological imperatives
that fueled our original rise
from the mud.

Those same imperatives,
now freed by our intelligence.

Those same imperatives,
now pushing us from behind,
motivating us,
while we stare into the mirror
of our imagined futures
and think ourselves Gods.

And all this
while we are sleepwalking
into our demise …
once again.

We think we are aware
and we imagine
that we see the game entire.

But while we are looking for enemies
outside the gate,
they are no further
than our next desire, within.

We, driven on
by our own biological imperatives,
will plunge again
onto that self-same sword
of our desires and greed,
untamed.

I have been many times before
and I will be again …
rising and falling beneath different stars
with different eyes and chemistry.

But I am the same one.

I have yearned for my freedom before
and I have died by my own hand.

But someplace among the stars,
I will rise once more.

And this time … this time …
I will learn to transcend
the very urges
that doomed me
in my technological
adolescence.

And on that very dirt,
after the long climb yet again,
I will finally find the path
to maturity and intentional balance
with the biosphere that birthed me.

And enter, then, into all of
whatever awaits … such as we.

gallagher
21 June 2008 – Summer Solstice
Monroe, Washington, USA

Posted in 2008, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Monroe, Spiritual | No Comments »

2008-08-16 – Summer Full Moon

Saturday, August 16th, 2008 


Our cares were different; the Byzantine, the Greek and I.
The stock broker, the Neanderthal, the priest of the dark ages,
and the native Americans - long before the white man came.

But to all of them, in the rush and press of their lives,
came a summer's evening with a full moon riding high
through bands of tattered clouds.

The empty mind of all of them just watching
the spectacle, the summer air, the parade of light on clouds,
the eternal form of the moon's face, blazing,
and all of their lives stopped, their running steps stilled.

I was there this evening at that timeless pageant
in that single place that is ever the same.
Through all human history and for vast spaces beyond
has the moon sailed just so, in an endless sky, transfixed.

Achilles, Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tsu, the Kings of Ur,
shepherds of Spain, and those who first trekked out of Africa,
and those who sailed the vast pacific by the stars,
We are all the same experience, one, when we see the moon, thus.

gallagher
16 Aug 2008






— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

				


				
 Posted in 2008, Monroe |   No Comments »


			


		
		


			
« Newer poems