It Runs in the Family

My brother recently wrote these inspired lines. There is beauty in the simplicity, but don't miss the deep underlying truths that saturate this single stanza.

Morning dew
As I doodoo
And remember to do
Because it's due

Silence

If time is money
And words are cheap,
Make sure your words are worth the time
Of those to whom you speak.

Love

It occurred to me one Friday night
That love is not some script we write
Or a poem through which we can recite

What love might look like in our minds,
So neatly placed in stanzas and lines.
No such collection can ever define it.

And so you must forgive me, see,
For these last few lines that cannot be
Constrained within my poetry:

You know you're in love, not when you find someone who meets all your criteria for perfection, but when you meet someone who causes your whole definition of perfection to change.

Why Didn't the Robin Finish Crossing the Road?

Did his mother tell him, "Look both ways?"

I do not know and cannot say,

But if she did, he did not hear

For when he crossed it was not clear.

He was not very bright at all,

This bird who could not quite recall

What dangers lie along the street—
How cars aren't friendly when they meet your face.

But out he leaped, he would not yield,
And so he met my car's windshield
And maybe never flew again,
But I don't know what happened then,

For I drove off and did not wait
For him to gain his conscious state.
But this I learned from the episode:
Chickens are better at crossing the road.


If you ask me, birds kinda had it coming ever since one defecated on my face. See "Aw Crap" in the blog archive, posted on May 12, 2013.

What Do Fish Learn In School?

A friend found this scribbled on a chip of sea shell during a diving exhibition in the Coral Sea. Upon translation, it appears to be a piece of politically motivated literature now attributed to a shark cult, which historians believe formed in the early 2000's, advocating equal treatment for all fishes.

When dusk arrives and you need a bite,

Consider what is just and right;

For as surely as sharks are fishes too,

Fish are friends, not food.

Poem

There are times when a rhyme cannot even come close
To the feelings you harbor and cherish the most,
And given that rhythm is often abused,
It may muddle the meaning expressed by your muse.

But sometimes these cramped lines of dull words explode
Into beautiful branches of poetry's road.
Each verse you traverse is a path to explore—
With each tour you discover there is more than before.

Pondering on the Eve of a Shining New Year

I lie and I wonder
Of bridges and water under,
And I think of the year that has past.
December is gone.
Soon a new year will dawn
And remind us that time does not last.

So I think and I smile,
At least for a while,
Remembering all of the good I have done.
But as road leads to road in my mind I am lost
In all of the evil I stumble across,
And I wonder what I have become.

But then I remember,
On this last day of December,
That the story doesn't end with the fall.
My debts have been paid
When on Jesus they were laid,
And to worry won't help me at all.

I need think no longer
Of the days I have squandered,
For I've been blessed with a shining new year.
So I look and am glad
For the times I have had
And to see the sun's face on this first day appear.