April 29 - A Man in Love

 

 

 

 

 

A Man in Love

Did I forget to tell you?
Did I forget to say?
Did I forget to love you
Sometime through the day?
Did I miss the moment love?
Did I miss the little glance?
Did I miss the gift I could have given?
Did I miss the chance?

Our time here's growing briefer.
Our opportunities for showing 
Our "I love you's" to one another.
Our time is softly going.
Help me catch the moment love.
Help more than just with glances.
Help me hear your heart my love.
I'm a man. I need more chances.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 28 - One Single Moment

One Single Moment

Once in a lifetime, comes a moment,
   You weren't even looking for,
When you stumble on a kindred soul,
    And walk together for a time along the shore.

One single moment makes the difference,
    One small voice will have its say.
One certainty in all the world you've found,
    One love that will not ever fade away.

To think I might have missed you,
     It's a thought to terrify.
The empty places I'd still carry,
     If you had only passed me by.

One single moment makes the difference,
    One small voice will have its say.
One certainty in all the world I've found,
    One love that will not ever fade away. 

Before I knew you I had loved you,
     I'd lain awake and wondered who.
Who you were; who I was missing. 
     And how I'd ever know when I found you.

But that moment made the difference,
    That small voice that had its say.
That certainty that in all the world I'd found,
    One love I knew will never fade away.


© 2019 by Tom King

April 27 - A Looming of Inquisitors.

No one ever expects the coming of the Inquisitors

A Looming of Inquisitors

I've seen it coming a long time now,
   In history books I read when I was a boy,
        In later years I read the warnings in the Scriptures.
Now I see it happening again in the papers and on the nightly news.
   The grim inquisitors are creeping back and in amongst us,
        Settling deep into the dark niches far up the halls of power.

Their numbers grow. They settle like fat, self-satisfied ticks
    Engorging themselves with the blood of the people our fathers
         Once made free and strong - sucking just a little bit of it;
Injecting in place of blood, the suspicious sweetness of empty promise,
    The temptation to self-righteous sanctimony
         And shallow belonging in place of honest solitude. 

The inquisition brings with it easy choices but only if,
    You don't think about the consequences of your choosing.
         If you pretend there are no consequences to be had.
The Autumn is coming against the looming of inquisitors,
    A shadow of something larger approaching glorious,
        On the horizon brewing in the vast and utter East.

 © 2019 by Tom King
     



     

April 26 - Solar Minimum

A Solar Minimum

I didn't know there was such a thing,
A Solar Minimum when the sun fails to birth
For a time on its face all those spots,
And cools in its ardor towards the Earth.

They tell me on the one hand don't
Pay attention to such things cause it's not
But a coincidence that the weather grows cooler
When the sun's face is cleared of its spots.

Some astronomers predict it could go on for decades 
This minimum could last for a while.
Certainly it'll mess up some government funding,
And the warming data alarmists hope to compile.

They say we've just 12 years - no more,
Computers model impending doom. 
In the wake of these prognostications,
Politicians spout even more gloom.

And in the meantime the merry old sun,
Beats down, just a little more gently,
And the publicans collect extra taxes,
While the rest of us worry intently.

Will our end be coming with fire or ice
As predicted on my television?
And if we're going to die one way or the other,
Do we need all that government supervision?

© 2019 by Tom King

April 25 - Next Stop "The Holy City"

Next Stop "The Holy City"

I used to walk alongside Old Betsy Road
On the abandoned railroad bed where once upon a time
The Old Betsy train rumbled up to the Keene Station.
With milk from the dairies, passengers at train time.

The rails are long gone. Ripped up leaving
Only rusty spikes as traces buried in the gravel
For us kids to find, evidence of an older world
And of the way our grandparents used to travel.

Locomotive, tender, passenger car and baggage
Not much of a train - a small engine, cars, two or three.
On a twenty mile circuit between two junctions
The Union Pacific and the TV&B.

My little one church town was the midpoint,
Of it's daily journey, dropping would-be preachers
At the station just down the hill from the college,
Along with missionaries, doctors, nurses and teachers.

The train used to approach the station there;
"Next stop, the Holy City," the conductor cried.
Until one day the train no longer came,
And the tracks were from the roadbed pried.

The Old Betsy road ran through our childhoods there,
But it's outlines fade as years to dust they wear,
The traces away, ever softer a nagging reminder
Of why once upon a time our fathers settled there. 

So much that's good gets lost as decades pass.
Memory dissipates and more's the pity. 
And we forget that once the conductor cried,
"Next stop...........the Holy City!"

© 2019 by Tom King

Drawing  © by Delbert "Sleepy" Read

April 24 - Hooters

Hooters

It's spring once again 
Old birds outside our window,
Sing love songs loudly.

© 2019 A haiku by Tom King

April 23 - On the Rock (Singular)

On the Rock (Singular)

 In all the wide river there sits a rock
  With your name engraved upon it. 
It looks like something you couldn't hit
   Unless you'd a bee in your bonnet
To hit the thing with canoe and paddle. 
   Intentionally and even in that case,
With such a tiny and singular target,
   And the river moving apace,
 What are the chances you'd run straight in
   Lift your bow clean out of the water.
And be left to the mirth of passing canoers
   And the scorn of geese, ducks and an otter.
    
© 2019 by Tom King

 

April 22 - Don't Tell Me What I Cannot Do

Don't Tell Me What I Cannot Do

Don't tell me what I cannot do. Not anymore.
   I'm not the skinny kid. I go MY way and won't divert.
I've learned the secret from a lifetime of bully boys,
   It's that you do not mind that standing firm will often hurt.
I was a cooperative child - I generally obeyed the rules;
   Then the hormones hit and my rebellion started.
Not much at first. I really did like school.
   And the wounds acquired from the thugs still smarted. 
Enough to keep my hormones in check somewhat.
   It's when I became a "quote" adult it really showed.
The smooth assumptions of my peers became,
   Inadequate to explain how life ebbed and flowed.
I put on weight and muscles and learned all about
   The consequences of surrender and how to defend
Without doing harm and how to take care of those,
   Who were my sacred charges to attend.
I find as the road before me wends away into 
   The inevitable night and then the glorious day,
It doesn't matter anymore who approves of me.
   Save for the One who guides and lights my way.

© by Tom King

April 21 - The Flowers of the Fields

The Flowers of the Fields

The grey parched fields of summer tan
   Turn into autumn's hay by heap and bale.
Dead winter ground follows; dry sticks, bare oaks.
   And solemn skies dusty blue, parched and pale.
Then comes the resurrection of the spring,
   A rush of blinding color spreads across the plains,
Covering the detritus of the long dry seasons,
   Spurred on by April gully washers and May's little rains.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 20 - Sabbath Blessings

Sabbath Blessings

Two things the Sabbath gives me.
Naps and lovely potluck lunches.
Lovely vegetarian delights in heaps,
Rolls, sweets and salads piled in bunches.

Three reasons that I come to Sabbath,
God's love and companionship to renew.
And to cultivate the comradeship of those
Who believe and love like I do.

One final thing that comes with Sabbath,
And that is time. A restful season set aside
So I can wander in the woods and look upon
God's handiwork breathless and wide-eyed.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 19 - Graduation Day

Graduation Day

I graduated high school without much celebration.
I went straight on to work and started college in the Fall.
I graduated college and went straight on to work the next Fall.
Today I graduated middle age and went straight back to work.

I think this "senior" year I'm going to celebrate.
Hey, after all I get all the senior discounts now,
At every restaurant, retail store and amusement park,
From here clear back to Texas and beyond.

From here on out I really do believe I know it all,
Or at least more than all you "young people" put together.
And maybe now I'll have some time to celebrate each day,
So long as I wake up on the green side of the grass.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 18 - There Was an Old Man

So that makes me 55 this year.....

There Was an Old Man

There was an old man who ain't magical
Who thought getting old was quite tragical
He had no magic potions
Spells, charms or lotions
Getting old was all that was practical.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 17 - East Texas Storms

East Texas Storms

Eight years and still when I step outside
I look to the southwest first to check the weather,
Half-expecting to feel a cool damp gust of wind
On my face; in my nose the slightly acrid tang of ozone
And dark clouds rising up along the horizon in that direction.
Flashes, sheets of light high up at first, until you start to see,
Ragged searing shafts of light crashing down upon the Earth.
Sometimes Earth fires back.  Blue white bolts of fire,
Streaking skyward. Setting clouds alight.
This afternoon I sat for a time out on the porch,
Watching fat, gray dull clouds roll up from the west
And the sea and over the thick stands of fir;
Across the volcanic plain at the foot of 14,000 feet of rubble,
Rock and snow. You'd think there'd be some noise.
But instead, unlike an East Texas storm, these northwest storms
Tend to be silent, well-behaved, to deaden the air.
Announcing themselves with a soft whoosh of falling rain.
I miss the rowdy storms of home. I really do.
Weather should be an adventure. Snow should whistle and howl.
Rain should lash and thunder. I do. I miss it. Even the thrill 
Of terror when the dark shape of a tornado skulks past
At a distance, silhouetted against the flashing cloud banks.
It is in the clean, damp silence when the storms have passed,
That you remember to breathe and you feel most alive.



© 2019 by Tom King

April 16 - From 40 Million Miles Away

From 40 Million Miles Away

Tiny little people forty million miles away,
Took a selfie with a camera from a red desert
On a cold Martian night when home was hanging
In space almost halfway round the sun.

From forty million miles away you can see,
How small we all really are on Earth;
How easy it is to put things in their proper places
If you just step back far enough to look at them.

2019 by Tom King

April 15 - Not Quite Just Like Me

Not Quite Just Like Me\
 

My brother's the guy in the middle.
With the Green Deal hat....

We're brothers. We're built much alike
Long torso, short legs; the scions of Weebles
We walk alike. Our voices are like Dad's.
But Mikey's a man of the peoples.

Outside one can tell we both share a name.
But we're both kind of different within.
My brother's a lefty; a leader in fact,
An Occupy guy to the skin.

He marches where I wouldn't ever
With peace flags and a fuzzy pink hat.
I'm a blogger and conservative pundit.
Politically we're different like that.

I'm not quite sure how that happened.
As siblings we're an interesting mix.
I lean right. I've got conservative values.
I think he leans left for the chicks.

We hooked up a while there on Facebook,
But my comments he never quite grokked.
So brother of mine, it was great while it lasted,
But for now, I'm apparently blocked.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 14 - Ripplin' Waters

Ripplin' Waters

There is no peace can be found
Quite like that of a murmering stream.
Me wrapped in a hammock in the crisp woodland air.
Drifting in and out of a dream. 
No rumble of the air conditioner,
To paint over the clean summer heat,
Just a soft cooling breeze off the river, scents swirling
Where the forest and the river's breaths meet.
Deep is the slumber by rippling waters.
A clean kind of tiredness all through.
Muscles stretched loose from paddling all day 
In rapport with a drifting canoe.
Let me sleep many days by the river yet,
Before my long voyage is done.
Give me peaceful days by the rippling waters,
Swinging softly in the afternoon sun. 

© by Tom King

April 13 - The Subtle Art of Dozing

The Subtle Art of Dozing

When you're young (the younger the more so)
You resist no matter how heavy your eyes,
Or how tired your mind. You do a nap jerk when you
Catch yourself drooping over burger and fries.

Succumbing to the the need to doze off.
Gets easier when you get older and wiser.
For one thing you do more, so you're tired
And you're forced to be an earlier riser.

Still you resist through your parenting years.
You can't nap when there are kiddos around,
Lest you wake with a houseful of fire and smoke
With the sofa ablaze and smoke alarm sounds.

Ah, but once the little darlings are fully grown up,
And sleepless out conquering the world perhaps,
And you're old, world weary, and ache in your bones,
Then its your kids encouraging your naps.

You learn how to take full advantage of
An opportunity to catch you some zzzzz's;
Sticking a pillow under neck or a blankie
Rolled up, a hammock in a cool breeze.

I've learned at my age when I hang with my kids,
That if I'm cranky or grumpy and my wish is,
For a nice little doze, I get sent to my chair.
For a nap, and don't have to do dishes.

You'd think that as short as the time we have left is,
We'd not want to waste it in afternoon slumber.
But to me nothing's better than to nap with my dog
In my lap with me sawing lumber.


© by Tom King

April 12 - Did Someone Say Lunch?

 

Did Someone Say Lunch?

(Selective Hearing)

When she's hot on the scent of a field mouse,

Or snuffling the trail of a squirrel,

And it's time to go home and I'm calling

She'll pretend to be deaf to the world.

But oh let her hear cellophane crinkle,

Or a can opener starting to whir,

Then her ears are as sharp as a cave full of bats,

And on her way to the kitchen she's a blur.

© 2019 by Tom King
 

April 11 - Man's Machines

Man's Machines

Since he walked out of the garden,
Men have been building machines.
Simple at first, hoes and shovels,
Then, carts and plows and cranes.

Gradually more complicated they grew.
War made them more beautiful and deadly.
Trade made them bigger and more essential.
Finally boats as intricate as a Rube Goldberg dream.

One of the most beautiful things man's ever created,
Fifty to half a thousand men dancing together
In time to the wind and the waves and currents
Just to make a windjammer fly across the water. 

Tens of thousands of intricately interconnected
Rope, pins, pulleys, and broad sheets of canvas,
Rudder, yards, tackle, sheets and men, a symphony,
In blood and bone, hemp and wood and steel.

Our machines are mostly steel now; things we
Sit upon and turn a key or flip a switch.
And off they go without us except maybe
To be carried along, holding the tiller.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 10 - Return to Nantucket

Return to Nantucket

Do you remember the man from Nantucket?
Who never recovered his bucket.
One day Nan came home.
Left her ex all alone. 
But as for the bucket, Nantucket.

But then Nan made a run for Pawtucket.
Found a plane to Bermuda and tuck it.
With Dad the cash she's splitting.
On a beach she's now sitting.
With a brand new guitar and she'll pluck it.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 9 - Grandpa's Mouth Harp

Grandpa's Mouth Harp
                             (a haiku)

Grandpa's easy chair
He blows languid riffs - train sounds,
From his old mouth harp.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 8 - Flying My Own Flag

Flying My Own Flag

I'm like a lot of people, when something awful happens
   To my home, my family, my nation, my world.
My first impulse is to hoist a flag in solidarity.
   A banner over me and mine and yours unfurled.
With pipes and drums and marching brothers in a line.
   We have mourned together, while pipers moaned and skirled.
Amazing Grace gets woven deep into our common grief;
   A blood red river flowing, sweeping, self-elucidation swirled,

Our flags define us. I'm flying four of them right now.
   A nation's and two state's flags and one flag a navy jack.
The defunct Texas Navy ensign flies beside my doorpost like 
   The ratty sailor's queue that even now hangs down my back.
I've fancied myself a sailor ever since I was a kid. 
   Swashbuckling from the oak tree "masts" out in the back;
Hanging mama's sheets from trees. Then later running up,
   Into the leafy canopy, my very own and private navy jack.
  
Finally I set real sails on Texas lakes and taught myself the knack,
   Of coaxing my ersatz frigate home upon a whisper of a breeze,
Laugh if you will. I'm not alone in flying private flags.
   We each and every one of us sail day to day on secret seas.
You cannot sail the oceans of experiences we've navigated
   Without you've collected a veritable cargo of idiosyncracies.
Renaissance Fairs, garden clubs, Scouts, reenactors, gamers 
   Hoisting banners, trailing would-be glories yet to seize.

I fly my own flags, though you may not see them hanging
   From my porch, nor even folded away inside some chest.
I, like most of us, may never hang my pennant on the mast
   But that will not preclude me looking to utter East and West,
Until I find a coat of arms and the perfect flag that suits me. 
   I'll never have a castle, nor an escort riding four abreast.
I'll never have a retinue, nor a navy of my own.
   But someday I will find my flag before I gain my rest.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 7 - Same Paths, Different Times

Same Paths, Different Times

Feet shuffling along in the snow,
Hooves and sneakers several hours apart.
Going the same direction but drifting
Slightly either side of center
Paths shifted one way and another
By terrain hidden beneath the snow,
Chance steps pushing our paths gently
Sometimes together, other times apart.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 6 - Ya'll Lookie Here!

Ya'll Lookie Here!

I'm a Texan and I always will be
I thought my state was ground twice blessed
Grew up between the piney woods in the East
And the wild grasslands in the West

I got some redneck goin' from somewhere,
I got some interestin' genes from pop and mother
Teachers and preachers up one branch
Rednecks, and union men up another.

I once taught school and another time rode
And wrangled 20 horses, 7 hours a day.
I never broke a bone, just sprains and bruises
That was something of a miracle I would say.

Now I'm sittin' in a padded chair my feet
Propped up, my knees iced down and medicated.
Rethinking stuff I jumped off, climbed up and fell from.
Almost regretting some of the joints that I rotated.

Notice I said "almost", 'cause I'm not so sure I would
Take back, the fun and make the joint pain disappear,
Those times I got to thinkin', "Hey what if I climbed up on..."
Threw up my arms and shouted, "Hey, y'all lookie here!"

© 2019 by Tom King

April 5 - Space Commander Tom

The Space Commander Brothers

Space Commander Tom

Third grade was fun and surprisingly literary.
Every day Mrs. Rogers read us nap time books
About Little America and Admiral Byrd,
And Caddie Woodlawn exploring fields and brooks.

That year I was a troll, dressed all in black;
White beard hanging down. I said "Forsooth!"
Then broke into song in front of a crowd of people.
(I still considered parents people in my youth.)

Mama bought us space commander shirts
For my brother and me - "V" necks just like 
Lost in Space and Captain Kirk on Star Trek.
We built a cardboard starship on my bike.

We were heroic space commanders that whole year.
Aliens quaked, trembling in their icy crevasses;
Fearful of the mighty space commander brothers,

Especially of the handsome one with the glasses.

© 2019 by Tom King

I'm the only 3rd grader in the cast with a beard.

April 4 - Hate Speech

Hate Speech

Once in a while we get kind of tired,
Of talking at one another.
Wouldn't it be nice if that happened
More often.

To speak to say your truth in the open air?
Are words, then, a privilege granted by kings or queens
Or a right of birth; sacrosanct and holy?
Inviolate?

I never met a word that ever made me bleed.
Is anything more powerful than humans choosing?
I never heard a speech I could not resist,
If wanted to.

I once wondered what we should do to stop all the hate.
As if it were "our" responsibility to do so.
The arrogant answered, "No choice should be allowed."
Exactly what I feared.

People with mouths that speak unbidden are dangerous no doubt.
Minds that choose whether they would love or hate or fear.
Cannot be fixed nor made better from the outside in - only from
The inside out.

© 2019 by Tom King

April 3 - Like Silly Putty

Like Silly Putty

A man named Walter McGillicuddy
Was considered a little bit nutty.
He fell for a girl
Who made his head whirl
And she handled him like Silly Putty

April 2 - Lost Graveyard in an Empty Field

Lost Graveyard in An Empty Field

A solitary stone cross stands alone in a hayfield
Where a home stood, children played and supper bells rang the time.
But time marches on they tell us and homes fall down; and big farms
Swallow small ones at last leaving only standing stones behind.

They're buried here, the first generations who walked behind the plow.
They were well-respected, well-loved and finally duly mourned.
The grass grows high, the names on the stones now hidden from passers by;
From the cars that rush by this place, the drivers otherwise concerned.

They were loved, those who sleep undreaming now beneath the stones.
Each stone placed by someone who did not want to forget their resting places.
But in scarce a hundred years both sleepers and those who placed the stones,
Are long forgotten, no one left who knows the names or remembers the faces. 

Save One who marks each soul that was His; who remembers all the faces,
That once looked up, trusting, knowing He to whom they once surrendered;
Who carved their names into His own hands in a lonely place much like this,
On another cross, had promised even lost graveyards like these would be remembered.

© 2019 By Tom King

April 1 - Sentinel

Sentinel

As the sun fades in the west it casts
   It's last light upon the sentinel's hoary flanks
Illuminating her frosted tresses of snow settled like
   Silvery locks hanging from the mountain's shoulders.
A taciturn presence she looms above the lands below;
   Quiet rivers and streams running down
From her rocks and high places
   Carving valleys across the plains at her feet.
You can feel her frowning down at you 
   When the light's like this and the sun's upon her.
A kind of menopausal fury waiting to be unleashed,
   To roar down the valleys she has carved.

© 2019 by Tom King