What’s Left

What’s left is a turkey leg
Attached to its bony carcass
On a dirty dish-piled counter 
Wondering whether it ends up
In soup stock or the trash can
It overhears laughter 
Some frothy debate 
A fight breaking out
New people broken in
Children running
Children crying 
Drunken singing
Zingers flying
Kisses stolen
Bodies swollen
Someone smokes outside
Games are played inside
And the turkey leg longs
To be a part of the throng
But it knows it won’t be
As its time is numbered
Maybe lasting till morning 
While largely ignored until 
The deep sighs of woeful
Cleaning have begun
But that’s hours away
And it really wants to stay
While the humans beyond 
Are purposefully loud 
Loving and painfully aware
Of limitations and aspirations
Until they all drift slowly away 
What’s left is a turkey leg
Grateful for the memories 
They forever become

–KWG

A Grateful Tree

 

I want to be a grateful tree

with branches high

that reach skyward

like all arms wide to

welcome the sun and moon 

and heavens above

I want to be a grateful tree

with roots so deep

that reach downward 

like arterial thrive

to feed its heart and soul

and heavens below

I want to be a grateful tree

a home to all

that fly and crawl

and scurry and pounce

in a welcome safe-haven

where no one is without

I want to be a grateful tree

unending love

for all who pass

to stop and smile

and then after awhile

embrace their grace within

--Kevin Grossman, #BhivePower

The Wonder Never Fades

It's one of the organic touchstones of our house. A hot corner. A slingshot through the kitchen to the living room and backyard and then back again. And no matter what we've done to it over the years -- wiped it down, spackled it, painted it over -- we just can't keep it clean.

It's not like a door frame or other enshrined place on a wall where you measure your kids' growth over the years. We had started that upstairs in their early years, but never followed through to now.

No, this magical touchstone much messier than that, like living life most certainly always is. Little hands that have touched, tugged, smeared and clawed one textured corner in the kitchen where on one side the grocery lists are made and the phone rings and the cabinets are full of kitchen things, and on the other side the same refrigerator we've had for 12 years hums and whirs and fills the rare silent spaces of our busy lives.

Little hands that grow bigger each day and never miss a chance of physical contact with this one kitchen corner. One day recently I watched and counted a dozen times in less than 15 minutes as our girls went from the living room to the backyard and back again.

But there are some specific childhood artifacts that hang down the wall between the corner and the refrigerator delineating points in time -- oven mitts made when Beatrice and Bryce were both in preschool. The mitts have their hand prints, their names and the years they were made.

And now there are so many memories that hang throughout our house, a family museum curated with love and mindful attention year after year. The past school years and other family photographs and memories now boxed in the garage, under-the-bed or in digital archives to be opened again in who knows when. Maybe when the girls are grown and gone and on their own. Maybe sooner. Maybe next week.

It's those handprints on the mitts that touched my heart the other day, though. Touched it, tugged on it, smeared and clawed it, reminding me to hold my family fast every day and to be forever thankful that I get be these amazing girls' father. And of all the ways to be present as Dad, the wonder never fades.

They blur and fray
Yellow and gray
Are carried away
By the gust of days
A childhood haze
And memory maze --
Of all the ways
To be present as Dad
The wonder never fades...

Until the End of Our Time

There we were drifting together on the choppy Big Lake,
lit up in the sun like safety buoys bobbing to and fro,
our youngest dripping wet and cradled quietly in my lap.

Fragrant pine and cool waves crested our floaties over and over
as the Mama pulled us farther out from shore bound together,
the water only knee deep these days due to years of drought.

Beatrice and cousin Braxton shared joyous laughter
while Bryce kissed me on the forehead, shivering.
I teased, "Bryce, I'm scared! Please save me! Save me!"

She giggled, "Daddy, you're big! You're not afraid of anything!"

Her words settled like silt, fathoms deep in my heart,
and in a mere moment a hundred thousand years passed
where they fossilized into layers of a hard time with happy.

You're not afraid of anything!

But I am, Bryce.
Of some things that is.
Not as much as I used to be.
But there are resurgent fears
now that you and your sister are here.

I'm afraid of growing old and of maybe getting sick,
of losing the Mama, your amazing mother, my wife.
I'm afraid you'll lose us like I lost mine
and that maybe we'll lose you both before our time.
I'm afraid you'll be bullied by unforgiving teens
and be hurt by a lifetime of minimized misogyny.
I'm afraid of perpetual ignorance, prejudice and fear,
and the fact that true justice no longer prevails
and in the blink of an eye good people can and do die.
I'm afraid that our economy will tank again
and everything we have will again be at risk
and that you won't have half the opportunities
we've had that were half of what our parents had.
I'm afraid that our democracy might one day fail
and that maybe that day is already here.
I'm afraid there is no God.
And I'm afraid that there is one.
I'm afraid of being accused of something I never did
and of never forgiving others for something they've done
and of always regretting something from near and afar
and of never having the chance to reconcile the lot.

I'm afraid of everything and nothing, Bryce.
It's you and your sister and your mother
who help quell most if not all my fears
and fill me with a hope and a love unending,
and who I will fight for and with
until the very end of time,
or until the end of our time,
or until the end of mine.

Heaven's Addendum

Their heaven wraps around the finger lake at sunrise
like a gold band forged now and forever.
I walk and cry and laugh and run along the paths,
Draw beauty of sky, trees, debris and water
deep into my lungs' tendrils that feed my heart.
I stop to pay homage to Kinkade and Sparks,
tempered (of course) by Hopper, Folds and Peart,
Bly and Kerouac, and Stein and Thompson Walker of late.
I thank God for my parents, for their love and suffering
when their bodies finally slowed to sudden stops
only four months and a day apart after a millennium.
Heartache leaves permanent scars of pleasure and pain,
but I thank God for my parents and their heaven,
for it will be there for me every morning I rise
promising more than until death do us part,
an eternal promise for my wife and us all.

All brought to you by the letter Z and a pink fuzzy.

"Life must be understood backwards; but...it must be lived forward." ~Soren Kierkegaard

I snagged this quote from my Dale Carnegie's Secrets of Success iPhone app the other day...

Chewed on it like Bea chews on her pink fuzzy blanket.

Thoughts erupting like teeth through toddler gums.

Painfully pleasurable. Distinct. Faux permanence. Fleeting.

Bea's current favorite letter is the letter Z; she hasn't learned the alphabet yet.

"Zzzzzzzzzzzz."

The omega longs for alpha. A cycle so adorned.

Bea gets the end of things. No more play. No more TV. Time for bed.

We long for new beginnings. No more pain. No more mistakes. Time for rebirth.

The truth of going through the back to the front and not around.

Poetic license renewed with mindful presence dawn after dawn after dawn.

All brought to you by the letter Z and a pink fuzzy.

Happy Friday. No I haven't been drinking.

The A&K Files: How Dragonflies Fall

Sitting in Robby's backyard this hot summer weekend, I noticed some beautiful burnished orange dragonflies gliding in the warm wind. I was fascinated watching them; two adjoined with another smaller one floating right behind.

I know I've been accused of being a poet, but I ain't making this stuff up.

I watched them, thinking how two halves make two wholes, then three, mindful of their moments in the sun.

And then I remembered a poem I wrote…

Dragonflies Fall

As we walked inside a favorite well lit place,

I noticed them huddled together on bar stools

like vagrants sleeping in long winter alleys,

or teenagers parked on dark summer roads,

or dragonflies joined afloat in spring winds lift.

Their inner arms are somewhat interconnected,

caressing each other's necks and backs while

opposite elbows are pinned to the mahogany bar

for fear they might slip away from each other

through the cracks in the hardwood floor to be

reabsorbed by the aged earth where moments

are measured in millennia and all stories ever told.

They hold chilled pint glasses half-full of idealistic

afterthoughts, like safety lines from a cliff edge.

We order our beers, and I look at you and say,

"Dragonflies fall through the center of the earth

like burnished amber in fading autumn sunsets,"

then I stroke your cheek and kiss your warm lips

and you wonder what they think of, watching us

fall.

And now we fall as three, mindful of our presence in the sun.

Daddy K wonders, if it’s a girl…

Father's Song

By Gregory Orr

Yesterday, against admonishment,

my daughter balanced on the couch back,

fell and cut her mouth.

Because I saw it happen I knew

she was not hurt, and yet

a child's blood so red

it stops a father's heart.

My daughter cried her tears;

I held some ice

against her lip.

That was the end of it.

Round and round: bow and kiss.

I try to teach her caution;

she tried to teach me risk.