Another day floats by

On this day

Down came the rain

Never too fast but

Always down and

In and out of it we ran

Never too fast but

Always moving

All morning long

From drop off

To pick up

We talked

Sang

Read and

Were silent

He walked

He was carried

He wore tennis shoes

Brown shoes

No Shoes

I wore boots and

Sandals

We saw bare trees and

Daffodils and

Nothing that resembled an umbrella

He said I love you

So did I

There was a hug or two

A confrontation or two and

Some alphabet crackers

By next week or

Thereabouts

All he’ll remember will be the alphabet crackers

The Old Days

The other night it was

The three of us

Sitting on the couch

Together

Once again

Just like in the old days

Except

That in the old days there were four of us

I suppose I should be thankful I wasn’t the one driven to pissing on everything

It just isn’t time for that yet

I should be thankful that I am sitting here with my wife

Listening to the other cats purr

Mingle with the sounds coming out of the monitors

Out of the monitors and over the

Piles of clothing

Pink, Purple, green, yellow, blue, and red

Adorned with bugs and sheep and polka dots and

Labeled with sizes

Some tagged with price

All just sitting there waiting for something to happen and

Content that it isn’t

Just like the three of us

As we sat on the couch

The other night

Anticipating First Grade

When you are about to leave a job

You pay more attention to the people you will be leaving behind

You make a point to say a few more words than you would normally

You go out to lunch more often

You throw around more complements

More smiles

You may even buy flowers or

Write notes

I have

I knew that things weren’t going to be the same

Which is why I am worried that

With first grade looming out there in August

She hugs me more

More these days than she ever has before

If she takes me to dinner or

Buys me flowers

I’m going to cry

Facebook Birthdays

I wished three people happy birthday yesterday

On Facebook

Two of them I haven’t seen since before I turned eighteen

One now goes by a name I didn’t know she had

All got the same wishes

With some variation in the frequency of exclamation points

It’s not a cake and flowers but

It’s more than I did last year and

If memory and 

Intention and 

Ambition get together

There’s room for additional exclamation points next year and

Maybe …

More!!!!!!

The cycle of life is pretty cheap

My son was very excited that a quarter I gave him was worth twenty five cents

Twenty five cents

Twenty five cents!

He repeated it a few times

With varying levels of enthusiasm

But always with enthusiasm and

Not any less than he has shown when told

How many cents it took to buy a muffin or

The car or

Whatever else he asks about

It was his quarter

A quarter he later deposited in his bank

Where I can later find it

When I need one or two or

More

For a parking meter or

A shopping cart at the grocery store

Later I pay him back and

He is excited

Twenty five cents

Twenty five cents!

Trailblazing

We should have felt like trailblazers

When the

Basketballs

Tennis balls and

Racquets

Even a miniature football

All came out

Along with us and

The sixty degree weather

On this fine Wednesday

Near the end of February

We should have but

That’s just not the way it works for me

Even if I show up at the school fifteen minutes early

I’m still not the first car in line for pick up and

Even before this Wednesday happened

I knew I was already

A step or

Two or

Two months worth of steps

Behind

There was no denying it

Not in the emerging yellow glow of the

Daffodils and

As we watched one ball after the other

Roll down the street or

Fly over the house

There wasn’t time

For denial or

Trailblazing

Plated Progeny and Weak Stomachs

My son’s pet turtle has burn-heart

Just like his granddad

(That’s me)

I have a whole passel of grandchildren

Including dolls of at least four races

One with legs hanging on by a thread

Two sheep and

A poodle her mother insists is a cat

Whose name is Juice and

Rides around in her own matching purse

But only one

The one who is supposed to have a hard outside

Has my flawed insides

He can’t have wine or chocolate

Just like me and

His dad has been worrying about his burn heart a lot

These past few days

It makes me a proud patriarch

A content patriarch

As long as my grandson twixt two plates

Stays away from my almond milk

The Road Already Taken

Two roads diverged in a wood and

I went back the way I came

Leaving both for another day

It doesn’t have quite the same ring

Does it but

It has a pull

The attraction of the familiar or

The unfinished

A yearning to fill in the picture

To know the details

Completeness

Comfort

Belonging

The attraction of that cozy little nook

You always studied in

In your college’s library

Don’t tell me you haven’t wished you could go back there and read a book

I have and

The truth that Frost left out

Is that you can

Lakes Don't Grow Old

You can’t skip stones forever

Even if you find the perfect lake

With not a ripple on its surface and

A beach loaded with smooth flat stones

You will get hungry

It will get cold or buggy or dark

You will be called to do something else or

You simply won’t be able to conjure up double digit skips

Arms do get sore

Minds do wander

Anything can become monotonous

More challenge than reward but

You can at least be sure

That while skipping stones

No matter how rough the water gets

It will never get up and walk away

Leaving you alone

Quiet

It’s quiet

It’s nap time and it’s quiet and

It’s taken me almost twenty minutes to realize

That it’s quiet

The three year old is asleep

That’s still normal

The five year old is also asleep

That was normal

Two years ago

Now

It probably means she’s sick

Me

I’m sitting her e

Debating whether I should include

An allusion to the stunning of pigs prior to slaughter

It’s quiet all right

Unnaturally quiet

Way too quiet

First Impressions

Today I brushed my teeth

With my sleek new electric toothbrush

At eleven at night

Standing in the tub

With a bath towel over my head

I can tell you that

I have been brushing with the old school toothbrush at night

For weeks

To avoid waking up my wife and

That tonight I really wanted to use my new toothbrush and

I wasn’t quick enough to think about just bringing it with me into the office

I can tell you a lot of things but

No matter what I say

You will still be picturing me

In the bathtub

Towel over my head

Brushing my teeth

True Love, Father Son Style

He wants to watch a video

His sister mentioned the word video and

Now he wants to watch a video and

He wants to make sure that I know he wants to watch a video so

He tells me he wants to watch a video

Over and over

Sometimes talking

Sometimes screaming

Sometimes chanting

I keep Explaining to him why we can’t watch a video and

Urging him to help us with the puzzle and

Eventually he does

A little but

He doesn’t stop talking about the video

Until it’s time for dinner and

He wants macaroni and cheese

This time I give him what he wants

Spooning it immediately onto his plate and

Relishing the moment

Buttons and Connections

I button his shirt

A blue denim shirt

With marbled tan and brown buttons

One button at a time

From the top down

Kneeling behind and

Reaching over and around him

As if I was buttoning my own shirt

Often I button his shirts while kneeling in front of him

Maintaining eye contact

Smiling and

That connection is awesome but

As he leans back into me and

My fingers move up from one button to the next

In the way they are most accustomed

I’m still smiling

All the way through

From the bottom to the top

In Search of Fleeting Flakes

An afternoon walk

Of muddy puddle splashing

Beyond morning snow  

Five is Fleeting

When I walked in the room

She was lying on her bed

Legs up in the air

Bouncing

As if she was riding an imaginary horse

Upside down

Very fast

Apparently she was giving birth

I’d heard that it happens fast

One moment you’re watching them put on footie pajamas and

The next moment you’re a grandparent

I wasn’t banking on a ten minute transition but

I guess they were right

Maybe I should stay in her room

Thursday

Is it Thursday

Already

Almost Friday

And it’s 10:29

Make that 10:30

Make that 10:31

And now I’m only

Waiting

Watching

For the little numbers at the bottom of my computer screen to change

And change they do

10:32

That was a minute I made much better use of

But it will probably be closer to 10:40 when inspiration strikes again

If it does strike again

Today

There are only two hours or so left

10:34

10:35

And where did 10:33 go

What about Wednesday

What about 2009

I guess I shouldn’t wonder about such things

10:36

I guess I should just be thankful

That I am here now

And that I know that

It is 10:37

On Februrary the 9^th of 2012

A Thursday

Princesses and Flowers

Princesses

Picking flowers and

Giving them to other princesses

Keeping some

Sunflowers

Violets

Daisies

Geraniums

Daffodils

Royalty 

Written and typed by Seren and her dad

Divergence

I would like to feel as if I was at the spot

Where two roads diverged in a wood

Currently it appears as if I am at the spot

Where somewhere between

Fourteen and

Thirty five

Roads

Diverge and

I’m nowhere near a wood

So there is no listening to birds or

Studying foliage

Whilst

I ponder

Whether any of the roads wants wear and

The speed at which the roads are multiplying and

Whether I would recognize two roads as clearly as I see

The difference choosing one or the other might make

Remote Control Smile

My son has a remote control

That magically changes the imaginary boat you are on

Into another kind of imaginary boat

It also turns the boat on and off and

Controls wave height

Cloud formation

Nautical traffic patterns

Proximity to sharks and

The location of the sun

It doesn’t

Make noises

Illuminate in any way or

Turn off or on any kind of electronic apparatus

It has no batteries

In my hands it does nothing

In his

It makes us both

Smile

Perspective

There is an almond in my cookie

A small almond

In a big cookie but

When you add it together with

My son’s almond and

My daughter’s almond and

The almond from the other big cookie I ate and

A handful of almonds I grabbed out of the bag

You might conclude

I ate a little cookie with my almonds

Taste

When I inadvertently place my thumb on my lip

I find it to be wet

I smell it

I instantly recognize the smell of cat food

Which

Since I feed my geriatric cat

Many small portions

Particularly at night

When

For some reason

He is ravenous and

It is five minutes to eleven

Is unsurprising and

Still disgusting

Yet I don’t taste anything

I can still smell it on my thumb

I suppose if I really worked at it

If I licked my thumb the way my son did today

Maybe even initially pretending it is chocolate

From a chocolate covered pretzel

That my father purchased for me

As a treat

Because we missed my class

To drop off his friend at the train station

Then it wouldn’t be inadvertent and

I would taste it and

It wouldn’t taste like chocolate

Expectations

This winter it hasn’t been very cold

There hasn’t been much in the way of

Icicles

Snowmen

Snow angels

Or Snow

And yet

As I have explained to my three year old son

A few times more than once

It is still

Winter