GRANDFATHER
Gone now ...
Buried by a cold, unrelenting earth
A good man
Fraught with faults and misgivings.
The rough caress of your old man's cheek
On mine ...
A joy in itself.
Teasing,
Laughing with me at my insecurity,
Gruff, but loving deeply
Your favorite grandchild.
For many
You have left existence forever
Gone now.
Living still, rejoicing in the world of my mind.
Leigh Grant
Summer
took our souls
and our hands met
through your dark hair
loose wind
the Wind ( that had
wafted cliches to and fro)
carried your eyes into mine
we smiled and
ran the grass between our toes
racing with the wind and
our excitement
Life was there and we oursued it
over the warm-baked hills
until Night brought the stars
and camp-fire and a
silence fuller than the
laughter of the day and
drew us close
Summer coughed and the
leaves turned colour
and died. The wind
which blew so warm
now carried cliches between
us and then a strange and
stronger silence
The leaves rattled from
the trees which saw us
Summer took our souls
and left.
Matti Ingerman
The still figure lay in his bed staring out his bedroom window to where the sky drew a grey blanket over the wide earth where life was to still go on. His cold eyes were set under a wrinkled forehead and his thin white hair fell slightly over ears and neck. His face was wrinkled with age. Ripples of skin sat under his eyes and alongside his aged mouth which had once spoken wise words. Now his mouth was still, for he knew he was about to die. His hands which showed years of hard labour lay on the clean white sheet which covered him. That's all the colour that was in him, just white, and the colour of old skin. There was no colour in his cheeks now, just the colour like that of the grey sky outside his bedroom window. He closed his weary eyes in prayer that God would deliver him to heaven. His mouth and eyes were still, even the slight trembling of his hand that was a constant characteristic of this old man had stopped. He now belonged to still life and to the aged.
Linda Haines
