Runboard.com
Слава Україні!
Community logo


runboard.com       Sign up (learn about it) | Sign in (lost password?)

 
GaryBFitzgerald Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info



Reply | Quote
Happy Father's Day


.


        That Which You Must Keep


The winds of time, they scatter lives
like leaves spin in the Fall;
scatter legacies and fortunes,
families and all.
More things are lost in lifetimes
than one man can scarce recall.
Down come our dearest, treasured dreams
as does the castle wall.

But if a man can grasp and keep
just one thing through the rage,
and though he’ll lose the book,
can keep but one slim page;
and hold it tightly to him
as he gathers years and age,
then surely this is whispered
by the oldest, wisest sage:

“Let nothing lost defeat you,
bring you worry, tears or bother.
Stay strong through war and pestilence,
through flood and wicked weather;
just one thing must you never lose,
because there is no other,
and that’s the love that’s in your heart
for your one and only father.”

Copyright 2005 – Evolving: Poems 1965-2005, Gary B. Fitzgerald




           Constellations


My father, the pilot, taught me
the names of the stars:
Betelgeuse, Sirius, Rigel, Polaris.
He taught me all the constellations:
Orion & Leo, Pegasus, Centaurus,
the eternal portraits of imagination
painted on the infinity of dark.

I was only three or four when,
just before sleep, he came into my room.
He told me that he would be home soon,
that he had to leave to hang the moon.
The next night I’d ask my grandmother
to take me outside to see “the moom”,
so I could be sure that he really was
still up there.

Long after the B-17s and the DC-3s,
but before his beloved 707’s,
my father flew the magnificent old three-tailed
Constellations, and many souls were carried
over empty seas, along the edge
of the heavens, presidents and kings and VIPs,
in skies then just as empty.

And now at night when I look up
I think of him and all the constellations.
I wonder how, after all these years,
they’ve never changed,
how all he ever taught me is still true.
I look up at the moon and imagine
what distant seas are flown,
what stars now skirted by his wings,
now that I’m sure that he really is
still up there.

Copyright 2008 – Softwood: Seventy-eight Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald
Copyright 2010 – Ponds and Lawns: New and Corrected Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald



   I Don’t Have A Son


I don’t have a son.
I’ve never been a father.
But if I had, they said,
I’d have been a good one.
But I was a son once, young,
and had a good father, too,
with whom no wasted time
was ever spent.

But if I had a son
I’d tell him the truth,
which my father never did…
that life goes fast by.
You won’t believe it
when you’re twenty,
but at fifty you’ll wonder
where he went.

Copyright 2010 – Ponds and Lawns: New and Corrected Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald



  Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


- Dylan Thomas


Last edited by GaryBFitzgerald, Jun/16/2013, 11:27 pm
Jun/16/2013, 11:02 pm Link to this post Send Email to GaryBFitzgerald   Send PM to GaryBFitzgerald
 
Christine98 Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info



Reply | Quote
Re: Happy Father's Day


hi Gary,

Thanks for the Father's Day poetry; Hope all's
well with you and that you're still writing,

Chris
Jun/19/2013, 8:45 am Link to this post Send Email to Christine98   Send PM to Christine98
 


Add a reply





You are not logged in (login)