March 2020
I’ve done so many things, I can’t even remember them all. Just a few, that I think are important.
Career in nursing, first as an RN, now as a Nurse Practitioner. Father of five, grandfather of seventeen.
Musician, missionary, photographer, poet, joker. It’s the joker in me that has made everything else fun
when times were good, and bearable when they were not.
Author’s note: People of my age start taking notice when too many of their heroes, idols, and friends make the front page of the newspaper by dying too soon. So we start thinking and planning for the only certainty in life.
Author’s note: People of my age start taking notice when too many of their heroes, idols, and friends make the front page of the newspaper by dying too soon. So we start thinking and planning for the only certainty in life.
when i go down
i've wondered of late
when i might go down
stop stirring the waters
of others' tranquil lakes
and give them rest
while i finally find my own
will it be on a tuesday
just far enough into the week
to not be a monday headache
but not so late that preparations
would last past the weekend
i think i would want things
to be done quickly enough
to get me planted on saturday
obviously it would inconvenience
my out of state siblings
and my aging father
who really doesn't like to fly
but would characteristically
not miss any life event
for his second son
and yes, i said life event
because dying is part of living
but back to the planning
as i said, get it done quickly
get me a dixieland band
live or recorded doesn't matter
keep the service short
and lively enough that tears
will have to wait
there should be fried chicken after
even if i won't be there to enjoy it
and chocolate cake of the darkest kind
with coconut-pecan frosting
thick like i'll never taste again
so many things i'll never taste again
on tuesday or some other day
when i at last go down
penny loafers
born in twenty-nine
nearly last in a line
of children that stretched
across that great depression
like a trans-continental railroad
by the time he started school
he was just a little slip
of a hungry boy, amazed
at how poverty pained
and mocked him
shoes were never new
but still, required
and when a sister's hand-me-downs
were the only things that fit his feet
then hand-me-downs it had to be
he gives a rueful smile
remembering how tough
he had to pretend to be
while all the better-off boys
in their sturdy leather cowboy boots
made him their daily target
the butt of every joke
he says it didn't matter
but his face tells the story otherwise
how else can a small boy rationalize
wearing penny loafers
without a single penny
©2020 j.lewis
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -FF