Bits and Pieces [The Legend Of an Old Man and the Balloon Popper]

You could tell by his long thinning hair below his bowler hat

Strings pulled and floating behind him

Was an old man, holding within shaking hands,

All sizes of brightly colored balloons; embossed in abstract bold print

Announcing all of his life’s successes and failures.

Strolling along the streets,  skipping past the alleys,

Looking up at his balloons,

He would speak to himself in a loud but timid pitch;

“Free! Life’s balloons! 

Pick a color. Go ahead, pick a size above the strings,

Pick anyone you please.”

 

No one ever did. Bits and pieces in his pace as he slowly moved,

In constant pursuit with purpose, holding his balloons.

              

***

Carrying a large white plastic handbag

Strapped between sagging breasts and tucked behind aging wings,

Carrying bulging contents that peeked in-between striding elbows,

Was an old Angel with a dull Halo; suspended above short cropped bluing grey hair.

With systematic jerks of her head looking up and down the streets,

She would give directions to her wings like a bird of prey.

A determined hunter; for that old man she did seek.

 

Her search begins in the dampness of dawn.

Always walking on the opposite side of the street ready to cross if need be.

She never stops looking, never stops shaking her head.

 

Gripped with white knuckles in one hand

Unable to be released, were bits and pieces

That glittered on the copper needle she carried.

               ***

Day of enlightenment almost caught up with the old man.

But, it did not. He was ambushed yesterday,

In the blur of wings and a redemptive screech,

Every balloon he carried was popped.

          ***

The old man continues to walk in a crushed cap,

Carrying  strings over his shoulder, begging

“Free! Sturdy strings! Free well tugged twine.

Have this one, please take this one,

I have had them now for much too long.”

i gaze at my reflection at  bits and pieces, starfish,

crabs, and broken shells in a shallow

tidal pool

Written on Star Island,Portsmouth,NH on a writers retreat..rev.2020

 

Family’s Christmas Song

Wake up! Wake up! It’s Christmas morn! We don’t care where we come from, or were we were born! We’ve seen the gifts in every one’s heart —we have the reason — from where this starts.

Good morning! Scrambled eggs, French toast, home fries, hot cocoa, and coffee dark and local roast. Adulthood peeking into childhood memories. Quietly giggling, mama kissing all our cheeks warm —papa getting dressed, telling us to get ready for church, “to celebrate a birth, in a stable long before we are born, another child in a family melody —poor as dirt”. Long before we understood —long before we could. And — as all children should.

We wake up! Awake, —on this Christmas morn; joyously understanding the meaning —and the chorus of our family’s Christmas song!

fresh wreath cabin tied

marks a home that welcomes song

from a Holy night

[In the Old Testament books, several hundred prophecies about the Messiah and His blessed Kingdom can be found. They are scattered throughout almost all the books of the Old Testament, beginning with the Five Books of Moses and ending with the last prophets Zachariah and Malachi. The Prophet Moses, King David, the Prophets Isaiah, Daniel, and Zachariah wrote the most about the Messiah.]

And so we are born.

 

(Pastel and Ink by R.K.Garon)

2019

 

Mother’s day Notes Found On The Refrigerator 2019

 

faded

after winters’ welcomed visit

in fall’s final embrace

life arises from a warm colorful quilt.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

ever so bright

a glitter of rain

against the bark of a tree

—colors glowing in its prism—

is the same light

seen in all life.

 

 

—and its source—

has been made known,

for all that look.

—is all they can see—

 

Photo: R.K.Garon ~The Night Before Breakfast~

 

 

Who Knows?

As i sit in anxious state waiting for Godot— hoping he never shows. Like a sparkle in a glass, asking me if i care to go? i will deny the invitation— i will stay and enjoy the sparkle— as all sparkles go.

Who Knows?

As i move in trepidation. Waiting for the fulfillment of my day, afraid of my responsibility when it is appears. So i deny its invitation— i will take this breath and walk behind it. Watching it fade, from rise, to descent, and feeling fear disappear.

who knows the mysteries

attributed to the ground i stand on

if traveled

i will have accepted its maze.

If understood,

I

will have accepted its direction.

 

 

Rev:14-19 *.*  ‘The Night Before Breakfast”

 

Dark Chocolate

      I was looking through old pictures today —some scratched and beginning to fade.  You were beautiful, impressionable, and innocent; packing lunches and having picnics, going home after chilled wine, crackers, Vermont cheddar cheese, and dark chocolate.

      My heart sank. I had to put them away —unable to find the joy in reviewing history. Remembering all the missteps I made when I was young, fearless, sometimes arrogant, misunderstanding love and its commitment. I drank the wine not savoring the chocolate.

      I will get back to them someday —but, for now, this evening, I will listen to Lake Winona. In-between the silence and dobs of the lake’s small rolling waves. I place the photographs beneath the bed I made.

 

Sit still to listen

Lake is playing a love song

Remember the tune

 

 

Originally written : Aug 8, 2016 …Rev 12: 1/26/2019 5:26 PM

 

The Night Before Breakfast

     

     Caged on the edge of a forest without boundaries; wind chimes shivered in silence. Youth held its breath. The night squirrels feast and fly. The owls turn their heads judging distance from prey to ground against a midnight sky. I escape, I must make it through the night, I must make it, not just try.

     With empty pockets, abandoning the compass of my mind, I make haste with unforeseen insensibility up the path, as an invited house guest, for reflection and a warm breakfast before my morning flight, sorrow less and free.

A still reflection left on a spoon, sinks into a bowl of abandoned oatmeal.

 

Dark moss seeking sun

Birch bent with acknowledgement

Child runs to mother.

 

Grass rising in dew

Casts crushed footsteps aside

Seeks Father in child.

 

Never finding ether one.

 

1st. draft 1/14 Title Piece for vol.I of IV “The Night Before Breakfast”

revision:14 1/18

 

Widow Johnson and “Old Man Whiskers” [rev 6]

Wearing clean well-worn clothes,

widow Johnson visits old man whiskers, on invite.

Her mischievous greeting smile and wrinkling forehead (burrows of time —burrows of life)

quickly disappear as she walks through the door

carrying a deck of cards and a cribbage board.

 

He could tell she played this game before.

 

They have coffee, chit and chat

while she shuffles the cards

and ask him to cut, if he preferred that.

He does several times and they play cribbage.

15-2, 15-4, and a pair is 6 and on and on it goes.

Up one side of the board and down the other

until he’s skunked. Twice in the best of three.

 

Still counting each hole with one finger,

checking the peg’s last hole and repeating the score,

she takes his hand, winking at him,

leads him up the stairs to the bedroom,

as she sing-songs quietly, but quite clearly,

hearing widow Johnson giggling,

“LoooZaaaaa.”

 

The Night Before Breakfast {vol I “Mill Street”]  2013-1018

 

Page 97 of 122 ~Pine Cone Diary~

[1st. Draft Dec,2017 rev: Sept,2018 ] 

A weathered Sundial

 

When we are young,

We can tolerate physical pain,

 emotional blizzards and blinding rain.

      We seek recognition, fortune, and elusive fame.

We chase glittering stars on summer nights

and keep sentry for sunrise to celebrate dawn with life.

 

We even can cry without forcing a fight.

     We can talk, discuss, and compromise.

We recognize beauty in a surprise.

We are able to light a candle when the fire dies.

 

When we are young,

we can laugh at ourselves. We believe in pennies

flipped fluttering to the bottom of wishing wells.

We become Peter Pan and Wendy

ignoring pouting Tinkerbelle.

 

We watch directions flow through heart than through mind.

     We travel distances immeasurably fast;

roadways, highways, and paths. We float

above chipped concrete, soft tar, and beaches

with ankle-deep sand.

     Even paths that are crook and twisted

in shallow water or on solid land.

     We are each other’s map.

 

We frolic in spaces where time never exists;

     along with places, where sadness, is just a visit.

When we are young,

eventually those days, I suppose, age eclipses.

 

**********

When we are old,

we sit with aches and pain. Confused and misunderstanding, we complain.

     Our clothes begin to slip or do not fit.

Along with our acceptance of expected fortune

 and absence of fame.

     We wear sweaters and warm cotton hats on cool summer nights

watching the sunset fade into rising moonlight.

 

(Having bitten Eve’s apple, once forbidden

     We become stubborn —guilt ridden with indigestion

and slow in healing. We sleep uneasily on thin frayed

but forgiving linen. We forget ourselves in mixed memories,

forgetting our birthday in evaporating wishing wells).

 

 

The sound of muted Tocks

Tick off the clock, like muffled thunder

under the hoofs of approaching mercenaries;

Angels from heaven and perhaps one or two

from hell’s monastery.

 

We shed a small tear, becoming a prism, a glitter

     in the sliver of a waning moon. We let it fall with joy

on another evenings shadow,

cast upon a weathered sundial, praying for the ‘morrow;

     when we are old.

(It all subsides from youth to age.

From steel to rust, from rock to gravel.

From coal to diamond and back to dust.)

 

The Soul of Maurice J. *[A dedication to Paul Lenzi]

*( written 5 yrs ago with another of my family’s  Patriarch’s Passing)

 

 It was three days

And three nights

Before he could rise again.

 

Death invites itself

Long before we receive

Its invitation.

 

The Soul with grace

And poise

Accepts the moment.

 

Who then is preoccupied

With judgement

Of this one;

 

Of this mist

That is dried by the sun

And returns as the pond?

 

The passage

Is insignificant

If balance has been achieved.

 

Only the witnesses

Are important

As another soul is freed.

 

 

The Ghost of Alonzo

     After a late Easter Vigil Mass; Alonzo and I crept and crawled under the beds of sleeping friends in the “Big Boys” dormitory at the Orphanage. Sister St. Jean was in her rocking chair sound asleep. Hearing her snore, was our cue to slip out of our beds, stuff the pillows under the blankets to make it look, from a distance, we were still asleep.

     Shushing each other with a finger over our lips we doubled checked Sister St. Jean, to see if she was still there, in the creaking rocking chair. She was assigned every other Friday night to guard the dormitory room. We knew, as usual on that night, that she would be out like a light before the first shine of the moon. We had her in our first class that morning, when the first bell rang.

     Waiting for her infamous rhythmic bass sound, and the silence of the chair on opposite sides of the well-lit hallway, divided by the Holy snore, in its silence, we met. Pointing at the doubled doors, which were opened for the warm spring air and the moon that was brightly illuminating the escaping concrete stairs.

    We tiptoed down, hanging on to each other’s hands and the other on the rails. Then we ran independently through wet grass with our heels sticking slightly into the mud of the warm spring garden before we climbed the fence between the two brick walls. I chipped my tooth as I fell on the other side. Alonzo picked me up, shook my hand and never saying good-bye, continued to run past me as he was waving one arm.

     Looking around, finding myself outside, I walked the long block around the orphanage at least twenty or thirty times. Circling many times, I was getting to know my way better each time. Eventually I understood and had to resign, that I had no place to go, now. And the sun was beginning to rise after my adventure that began after sundown. I knocked on the front door where I once entered several years ago, to go back, again inside. As I went in, walking back to the dormitory, I could hear the corridors murmur, “he has found away to leave here”.

They will serve my meal

I have found the heart of thorns

                                     may I find the way.

**

Stood the Archangel

with the serpent under foot

                                          handing me her sword.