Category: Uncategorized

It stood as a sentinel

Guarding the backyard.

It never demanded recognition

But always received admiration.

The rock, more like a boulder,

Stood at the corner of our house.

Offering refuge and comfort.

It did not judge,

it was not critical.

A safe haven

for all who sat and climbed on it.

It could accommodate all kids,

And cats, and even a dog.

And it did not complain.

Summers were spent

Lying on the rock

Beneath the limbs of its neighbor tree.

I would lie on the rock and daydream

In the sun with the cool breezes of a Michigan summer

Blowing over me.

King of the rock was a game would play.

The rock never demanded attention, or proclaim its existence.

It simply was.

A product of the world

Neither made or shaped by man.

Silent in its being

But providing comfort in its permanence

I could always depend on the rock being there.

A sanctuary of my childhood.

A fortress from the world.

The hour drags; their gazes drift through space,

While earnest words are scattered in the air;

You speak of working worlds at hurried pace,

And urge the mind to see the value there.

The binders click, the restless bags are packed,

Two final thoughts provoke a weary sigh;

You yield the floor, release the crowded tract,

And watch the frantic bodies scatter by.

Now silence reigns beneath the fluorescent glare,

The sudden stillness settles, deep and gray;

No lingering voices haunt the quiet air,

While weary thoughts assess the vanished day.

You turn the key, leave campus ground behind,

To let the winding country calm the mind.

I lived as the boy tucked inside the wall,

watching the bright world from the inside out.

A solitary witness through winter, spring, summer, and fall,

holding no grievances, finding nothing to shout.

I walked through the decades and carried my part,

sitting in pews and the warmth of a crowd.

Yet a quiet remains in the core of my heart—

a hunger to speak, to be known, to be loud.

For when we stand near the edge of the knife,

and time draws its border across who we are,

the solitary soul asks the meaning of life:

to be witnessed up close, and not viewed from afar.

As the shadows grow long and the daylight recedes,

and I face the quiet shape of my own history,

I ask the dark room what a lifetime concedes—

when the door closes soft, will anyone remember me?

A sonnet on the joys of being “analog.”

We lay the glowing glass upon the pine,

And turn the fevered pulse of circuits low,

To leave the frantic stream of the design,

And let the simple room begin to glow.

Across the wooden board no borders stand;

The light falls warm upon an open face.

No hurried prompt commands a shifting hand,

Nor measures out our minutes in this space.

Yet when the constant hum at last is still,

The quiet breath reveals an ancient ground,

Where eyes can meet and listen at their will,

And words return to their authentic sound.

We drop the hurried armor from our chest:

To sit, unmasked, and simply be at rest.

He tended Mother with a gentle hand,

And listened closely to her ache and pain;

To give more days within this quiet land,

Where time is fleeting and will never reign.

She held your fears throughout your early youth,

And kissed the wounds of childhood through the night;

Now years unveil a fierce and tender truth:

A parent dims as shadows claim the light.

Yet doctors grant a brief and blessed grace,

A holy gift of hours sent from above;

For nothing can extinguish or erase

A child’s deep devotion born of love.

Though precious time is all we seek to hold,

We learn to let it go as life grows old.