My friend, I've loss

I am more and more enjoying Langston Hughes.  This poem touched a nerve about a recent loss in my life.

To a Dead Friend
by Langston Hughes
[first published in the May 1922 issue of Crisis]


The moon still sends its mellow light
Through the purple blackness of the night;
The morning star is palely bright
        Before the dawn.

The sun still shines just as before;
The rose still grows beside my door,
       But you have gone.

The sky is blue and the robin sings;
The butterflies dance on rainbow wings
       Though I am sad.

In all the earth no joy can be;
Happiness comes no more to me,
       For you are dead.

My friend, I've loss

Spark in the cool night

Your tones shined golden and brown--

I still need telling

Is life a cycle, or continuous juxtaposition of memory and hope?

1940s songs

Service cuts into life's fall--

War and life bloody

I visited my aging parents last weekend at their assisted living facility home.  They held a little celebration for veterans, most of whom served during the 1940s, including, of course, WW II.  Afterward, someone played some popular songs from the 1930s and 40s, and most in attendance sang along.  One of the vets sang quite nicely. 

Later, I tried to use the restroom in the dining room, but couldn't.  It was covered in blood.  It seems the sweet-singing vet had fallen, which he apparently does routinely.  An awkwardly jarring scene was this...wistful recollections of youth, honor of service, and the violence of the infirmities that come with old age.

Rains fall so gray begins--

Dim days in a long school year

Keep faith with the plan

The Joyful Reality of Fatherhood

An old friend introduced me to this poem, and it reminded me that (nearly) every son has his struggles with his father.  And every father worth his salt makes the sacrifices he must for his children.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Furnace blows heat now

Wages earned in warm darkness--

Lonesome bright future