xliii
Music is perched on a pen’s pointed tip,
A nestling craving brav’ry’s feathered wing
To take flight. In black ink, a new quill dipped
Drips words to cool the season’s wintry sting.
Yet, friends leave to brave a cold far colder—
A chill of Artic wind blowing across
Foreign lands darkened by sudden dusk. Brrr...
My loss is their gain—their courage tosses
Them o’er seas churning with contentment’s hope
In a re-discovered country, despite
Snow (or because of it). What tattered rope
Will connect us as they brave this new night?
But, for these friends is born a fresh day, bright.
Dodge this chill! Heated Pen, take flight...and write.
The Hoggards are heading back to the frozen tundra, and I’m not talking about Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. Finland calls them back. I believe for the last time.
When I was first told, I have to say I was more than a bit perturbed by the whole situation. To move from country to country and back again like some twenty-something jet-setters bordered on absurd. Before they could even get settled in America, off they go too Findandia. The height of capriciousness.
After the initial and completely selfish anger passed, I began to feel guilty. We weren’t good enough friends. We didn’t see them often enough. For, if we had made the effort to welcome them back to America, the Hoggards would surely find us more appealing than the motley crew of morose drunks swilling watered-down anti-freeze in the back alleys of Helsinki.
But, the guilt has passed as well. All that is left is a hole vacated by the Hoggards warmth, which is being slowly filled with the memories of the past year—memories far too few.
Far too few indeed.
A jet cuts gray skyPosted by haberd at December 5, 2005 09:21 PM
With gray exhaust...with gray rope
Memories remain
Beneath the slipstream of
life there is perfect calm
from which stone cold eyes watch
the clutter's crazy swirl.
Perhaps every wobble
is counted, parsed & weighed;
Perhaps each sudden turn
is speculated on
in the unhurried prose
of the ageless machine.
Here & now, though, there's no
time to worry how their
icy algorithms
describe a perfect fool.
The wind rushes on & I
glide with it, cutting clouds
like a tiny kite that's
snapped its string & is free.