Christmas Bells

Long time passing, short time gone
Christmas bells, cold and brass
Hang in the windows, gleam in the firelight
Sound softly if the breeze is right
And not at all if the children are gone.

© 2002 by Tom King

Christmas Psalm

By Tom King © 2009

Christmas is my touchstone

It makes me smile at strangers.

It pushes me to reach out to family.

It fills my head with music.

It tells me I should at least try to be pleasant
To the harried clerk at Wal-Mart.

Even though I am over-worked and aching
Down to my very bones,

I pull it all together one more time; one more year.

And I am lifted up and taught to be
A better man than I had thought to be,

     because it’s Christmas

I Wonder What Stories She Tells

I know the stories I've told about my Dad

My kids do too – I've told them often enough.

But this morning while I was riffing on the old man's foibles

It struck me.  I wonder. Does my daughter tell this kind of stuff

                                                                 ………….on me?

I know the stories I tell about when I was a kid.

My Mom never knew some things I did back in the day.

If she'd known what I was doing she'd have been horrified.

I wonder, when my daughter tells her stories would they

                                                                   ……horrify me?

I know the stories I tell about my kids when they were young

My kids were there and, when I tell them, off they go to hide.

They complain when I tell stories; don't think they're all that funny.

I wonder if, when I'm not around, they tell their own side

                                                                    ….of those same stories?

My daughter is too much like me, quick witted, opinionated and stubborn.

Like me, she lives her own life the way she chooses, free and wild.

But now I'm old enough to look forward to the stories she once hid from me,

I expect that, when I hear them, I shall discover that she is truly a child

                                                                            ………...of mine?

© by Tom King

Just Us Two Against the Tide

Just Us Two Against the Tide
by Tom King

Just us two, holding hands against the darkling sea..
Fingers interlocked to keep the tides at bay.
Just the act of breathing seems a current pressing hard against our shins,
Threatening to knock us down and wash us clean away.

If Someone built the sea and time and tide - brick by tiny atom brick
Then standing in the rush of it, we'll cling tight together so we do not fall.
And if we are snatched away with the passage of the sea and time
I will not let go your hand. He may have us both or not at all.