It’s the memories

It’s the memories everywhere

That keep me in thrall – I stand and stare:

Here you used to lay your head on my feet,

There you would patiently wait for a treat,

Downstairs you would run to fetch your bone,

You never ever left me alone.

Oft I did. When I would leave without you

And I’d say I’ll be back in minutes two.

You cocked your head as I walked out the door;

But you have left me forevermore.

Who will sit by my side these long nights?

Who will I cuddle and hold so tight?

Who will take me on impromptu walks,

Or just sit with me when I don’t talk?

I love you, I did and I always will –

Of you my heart cannot have its fill.

I still will wake and miss you on my bed,

I still ache to hear your bark or your tread.

Little memories remind me of you.

Each is vividly permanent and true.

I stand and stare and then I quietly weep

And hope I meet you again if I sleep.

Degenerative Myelopathy

Each day the light grows closer,
Each day the spinal chord slows her;
All I can do for this heart of mine
Is bargain with what I hope’s divine.
I cannot appease my cold fortune,
So I just drag my heart to its tune.
I drag her on the roads she knew well,
My heart bursts, but hey, who can tell?
I see how she wishes her body could play
And I rue to see her struggle this way.
I have given death three children in pain.
After her, how will I ever love again?
She brings light into my dark life –
She is my daughter, sibling, wife.
As the light shines in the distance I know,
I will have to someday let her go.
But my heart cannot agree
To what must be, must be.
I guess this is what prayer helps with,
But I have no trust left, not a bit.
She is my heart, my heart is she
And my heart is dying silently.

Those books, those films, those stories and those songs

Those books, those films, those stories and those songs

Convinced us how love in life belongs.

They made us sops look for it all over:

Hope to look for it in four leaf clovers.

They never mentioned what to do after –

When the tears slyly kill the laughter,

When the stars and moon blot out and die,

When we glean every one was a lie.

They never talk of love’s staying in lease,

Or of death, or of pain, or of disease;

They never mentioned how love loses faith,

How it doesn’t need another love to mate.

 

Maybe, I am to blame for I looked away,

From the books, films, songs that had this to say.

 

I realize now what love’s true nature is:

Unjust quotients of sadness and bliss,

A ruse to reproduce before you get forlorn,

With nothing to do once the kids are gone.

Of this I’m sure: after all the cheating,

Although love leaves, the heart keeps on beating.