Category Archives: writing

When a song isn’t “just a song”

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Music speaks to our inner being in many ways. Melody and rhythm can get our body moving, increase our pulse, or help us relax. Music with lyrics can do the same thing, but the added dimension of words with the music impacts our thoughts and feelings on a different level. What poetry does without music; song lyrics achieve in combination with it. It is much like poetry in this way, with music stated rather than implied. Countless stories exist about songs that opened doors for people or affected them in some way.

I like the Beatles. Their music and lyrics always provide me with a feeling or thought I didn’t have the last time. It is particularly uplifting to me. Others may feel differently, or other artists may provide that same feeling to them. Yet, for me – I always return to the Beatles for inspiration or comfort.

My parents have both recently passed away. My father in 2019, and my mother last December. Both parents wished to be cremated, so my brother, sister and I abided by their wishes. When my father passed, we made no arrangements to inter his ashes, as we had to quickly make plans to relocate my mother closer to me as a primary care giver. My Dad’s ashes traveled with us approximately 800 miles from their home and sat on my mother’s bedside table. My mother, despite my best efforts, did not take especially well to the relocation. Then the COVID pandemic interrupted our lives. Far from her “home”, she was not her happiest self and tended to sleep a lot. This continued after restrictions to visitation were lifted. Ultimately, she passed peacefully in her sleep, a manner that I am confident was her deepest desire.

We held a brief family-centered service so that the immediate family could all say their goodbyes. But after her cremation we were faced with what to do with her ashes and my father’s ashes. After a bit of reflection, I thought it would be a good idea to bring them back to the community that had been their home and inter them in the church that had been their extended family. I made contact with the church, and after several months of discussions, planning and delayed communications, we finally arranged a memorial and interment service for my parents. It is actually today, as I write this, in approximately 3 hours.

As I prepared to make the 800-mile drive from my house to our destination, I was going over the mental checklist, setting the GPS, and turned on the radio in my car. I often listen to a certain satellite radio service that carries “The Beatles Channel” (18). They have a regular feature entitled, “My Fab Four,” that features fans or other musicians, actors, etc. listing and deejaying their personal list of four favorite Beatles songs. This feature was just beginning, as I pulled out of my driveway onto my street. The featured deejay talked about the first song in his list being on the first Beatles album he had heard. The song was “Two of Us” from the Let it Be album.

Two of Us, by Paul McCartney/John Lennon

Two of us riding nowhere
Spending someone’s hard-earned pay
You and me, Sunday driving
Not arriving, on our way back home

We’re on our way home
We’re on our way home
We’re going home

Two of us sending postcards
Writing letters on my wall
You and me burning matches
Lifting latches, on our way back home

We’re on our way home
We’re on our way home
We’re going home

You and I have memories
Longer than the road
That stretches out ahead

Two of us wearing raincoats
Standing solo in the sun
You and me chasing paper
Getting nowhere
On our way back home

We’re on our way home
We’re on our way home
We’re going home

You and I have memories
Longer than the road
That stretches out ahead

Two of us wearing raincoats
Standing solo in the sun
You and me, chasing paper
Getting nowhere
On our way back home

We’re on our way home
We’re on our way home
We’re going home

We’re going home

You better believe it
Goodbye

The lyrics spoke to me in that moment. Two of us….On our way home…We’re going home. Now, granted this is The Beatles channel and chances are good that I would have heard the song sometime during the day. Yet, hearing it the MOMENT I left my house on a journey returning my parents to their resting place and their home. There was something otherworldly about it. Neither of my parents cared much for the Beatles, but they were musicians and understood the messages that music can convey. I believe that I was being spoken to by spiritual forces conveying their approval at what I was doing. Fast forward to the end of my trip. I stopped at a town 20 miles from my hotel destination to grab a fast-food dinner. I received my order at the drive-thru and was returning to the interstate – I switched on the radio to the Beatles Channel. “Two of Us” was just starting to play…again, the timing of that moment was simply supernatural.

Sometimes a song isn’t just a song. Sometimes it is a moment of revelation or confirmation. To me, this was as if my parents spoke to me, telling me this was what they wanted. They are home.

Music is the universal language of mankind. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thanks for reading.

Opalescence

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A jellyfish cloud drifted in the sky

propelling itself hither and nigh.

The type of motions that mesmerize,

whilst I woolgather time in the ocean wide.

A rabbit perched upon some pillow fluff,

awaiting a moment to jump, and not to muff-

then disappear inside a hole in a huff.

(All this I’ll imagine soon enough.)

And later, the sky I watched was flattened and grey.

A canvas without texture on a humid summer’s day

settled in to remove my imaginative display.

And the daydreams diverted down and away.

The shades of green caught now in my sight,

Jagged lines on the edge of the canvas’ chalk-white.

whispering connections to the last vestiges of light.

And the opalescence of dreams settled in for the night.

Torte, with my father

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Chocolate dense as darkness.

The flourless cake, its heaviness derived of bittersweet.

A china cup , a black pool swirled with an opaque liqueur.

The taste of each as contribution –

rancor offset by the affable.

I sit across the from the empty seat you once used.

My memories are heavy with the affection of your company

and controverted by your absence.

Each bite with a following sip a battle of emotions.

How it lingers, the memory of your sudden death

followed by the overtones of your prescience.

The night we talked late, and you said “the parent becomes the child”

Yet, I still want to ask you for advice and you never quite accepted mine.

The sound of my fork clinks and the resonant ding of the cup

as I set it down upon a saucer

all I hear in reply.

*****A memory of my father on this Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Rabbit

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The sky was pallid, lacking device.

My ambition was weedy and my aims imprecise.

I walked near a garden while out on a stroll.

My mind in a spin that was out of control.

When a rabbit darted from beneath the hedge-row yew

out onto the pavement and pondered askew.

It paused just enough to acknowledge my glance

then hurried away in a leap and a prance.

My eyes then diverted to a swelling of phlox,

purple and white, and crept over rocks.

Opportunistic, these flowers that crawl

slow and indifferent of their beauty and sprawl.

A shelter for insects, this bloom carpet sum

covered terrain in a besetment of rhumbs.

The rabbit returned, hopped in a straight line,

I stood there connecting the points to design.

What wonder is here. What mystery there.

The path to discovery does not compare

the direction, the lines that we draw are just that.

Drawn from perspective, our own charted plat.

The rabbit now vanished, my lunch hour spent,

I returned to my workday with a poet’s intent.

Bridges

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A craftwork of metal and wire arisen out of a mist.

Something fashioned by a fantasist

appealing to our journey, future-made

above the clouds with hope arrayed.

A box across the creek bed, made of wood.

The romantic moonlight lit and understood

its dirt road point of interception.

It hosts a memory of affection.

The stone one with its aqueduct eyes,

peering just above the waterline.

A docile stream that’s hardly flowing,

yet moves a slight, its life sea-going.

The poet’s words are diffident,

but stand in verse, the infinite

transitions to a place of rest

spanning over rocks and clefts.

Horizons stand, all that remains

beyond the beckoning segue plains.

Reunion Rhyme – For the RHS Class of 1982

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Cyclones class of ’82, how does your garden grow?  In 40 years, these plants have grown- some rapidly, some slow.  Some sprouting leaves, some spreading seeds, and flowering as they go.

A few stand tall, some standing short, some spread along the ground. A garden of mosaic art familiar, yet new-found.

Some leaves are broad to catch the rain, some narrow, small; we can’t explain the reasoning how they thrive so well – except God’s grace, we hear them tell. Bloom where you are planted, I’ve so often heard and chanted.

Once our plants were in one plat and lived among this habitat. We grew from seedlings, shoots, or grafts – thriving as we learned our craft. With help and care from those who taught our landscape grew and then we sought our own estate. We took our seedlings to create.

And here we are, a lifetime passed, our gardens grown and fruits amassed. I’ve pondered this and have to ask:

Friends from 1982, how does your garden grow? With humble grace in your chosen space, from seeds culled long ago.

With Coffee

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I reached for a cup with stripes in the cupboard,

setting among the ivory porcelain others,

and after putting it down on the marbled counter

I waited for the coffee to spit and sputter.

I poured from the carafe to the cup with the stripes

and added sweetener from a yellow packet, twice.

I stirred with a long-stemmed spoon, and thus

the coffee swirled and swirled.

 I confess among the rivers in my mind

I counted the swirls encompassing time.

Somewhere there adding some milk in a dollop,

I came up with this veiled verse of codswallop.

If you’ve read this far thinking I’ve something to say,

maybe it’s just that I like my coffee this way.

Or perhaps my own struggles in crafting aright

this poem’s distraction is less of a fight.

The coffee in the striped cup has a caramel hue,

is sweetened with a bitterness aftertaste too,

Like many poems that I’ve already done,

it’s finished, and the cup sits in the sink in the sun.

Curating

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When I was boy, I’d spend time under a towering southern pine. Whose needles cast a glare in the summer-lit sky and its points directed everywhere.

Now older, I travel here and there, and see the trees that stand aware and pause to take it in. The light that shimmers with the shade and curating the different shapes of leaves all made.

The oval spoon of plum and quince, or the linden with its sharpened tip. Formed to gather in the sun and rain, collected dew that slowly drips and drains.

The starfish shape of the sweetgum leaf, inspired to creativity. As poems with their structured phrase and red-emblazoned points in space.

The divided prongs from the pin oak leaf that grasps the memory of a summer breeze. The stacked order of the hickory, harkening to an autumn sea of yellow leaves.

Each one novel in its time and pressed in a book will hold its shine from birth to death. They grow, then die in cyclic breadth.

And through the time when leaves are felled, the needles of pine remain and tell with glistening light or captured snow – infinite points of where to go.

Outlier

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I stared into a pitch-black midnight
to write of emptiness in the dark.
A space of nothingness and naught
from which creation sprung in might.
In the void just out of sight
a moment not content, embarked.
The single flower in the pot,
a point, a speckling shared its light.
The space surrounding it recites
in motionless time when a moment harks.
A melody repeating on the spot,
a verse then opens with a different plight.
This thing with hopes that will ignite
and focus the poet on its spark,
and in the notion we see, besot –
the outlier is neither shy nor contrite.

****

A poem of inspiration to bring in 2022. I wish everyone a safe and happy new year. May it be everything you want and need.

Prowess

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It stands among the grove and scene of broad-leaf oaks and evergreens, blending with a verdant shade. A tree of average height and shape and just a piece of larger landscape.

Not much given thought in Spring, while standing tall and whispering. The leaves- rattle in a summer rain. All the trees sway and gain.

Colder mornings may entice with scraggly branches set in ice. Do we mourn the loss of Spring, a season meant to wake and sing?

A single object in a stand, a soloist among the chorus grand, coloring the land with blossom’s youth: A rebirth and eternal truth.

But it’s autumn when the sunlight dims, leaves once green, now scarlet, lend glow and fire to what once was live. Dotted here and there ardor survives.

Autumn’s prowess has arrived.

**** Photo taken by Becky Crenshaw. Used with permission.