A bundle of rags asks for change,
A dirt scuffed hand extends a cup.
Change, any change, can you spare a dime?
There is no change only plastic,
No shiny pennies, nickels or quarters,
Replaced by Visa, Master Card, plastic.
A baby cries in frustration, red faced.
The new mother is tired, imprisoned.
The joys of motherhood wearing thin,
The baby needs a change,
There is no change only plastic.
2023, Donald Harbour
This winter, the New Year has become a trollop of time.
An indecent excuse for the changing of the year.
It violates our thoughts with despair and declension,
This calamity of illness, a contentious infection.
The brave face, a stout heart, none can turn it away,
It is earned, bought with the coin of ignorance.
Its festered soul nurtured by social pestilence.
The nations great shamans are lacking a cure,
Burying their heads in tribal hoodoo voodoo.
All opportunity to soar above dyscrasia, squandered,
Wasted on petty dogma and personal convictions.
The world waits, groaning at humankind’s confusion,
City on the Hill eagles have fallen from the skies,
There is no one left to teach them how to fly.
A year just begun, its inheritance, last year’s baggage.
2023, Donald C Harbour
Please forgive me darlin’,
You see, I’m only a man,
The rules for everything I’ll be,
Are written in shifting sand.
I’ve loved one woman forever,
Always loving you is what I do,
This temple built on my hill of life,
Was built from a dream of only you
I know my time is coming,
My sunset just over the next hill,
When the night falls upon me,
My constant love will be yours still.
The past will judge me unfairly,
The future cannot be known,
Today is all I have to give,
Tomorrow is yours alone.
2023, Donald C Harbour
The face of the sun is hidden,
Its antagonist a tawny edged cloud.
If Sol will take revenge on a desert,
It does not suffer an idiot cloud,
Wind is joyously dancing with the trees,
To a musical rustling of falling leaves,
They drift as years of life descend,
A cascading irreverence for the past,
Molting the pathway toward tomorrow,
Nature sighs as it has for eons,
There is no regret, no reflection,
Only the eclipse of time.
2022, Donald C. Harbour
I see you, you’ve become
dust floating in the air,
particles riding sunlight,
going somewhere but,
never knowing, where
somewhere is, until arriving.
Memory is an unforgiving
trickster, a smithy, at
a forge shaping the raw
steel of our lives, then
scraping it to the past.
The river of our existence
flows against time’s current,
flawlessly, impeccably, unerringly
toward a crossroads with destiny.
I believe you are there, unseen,
standing in the shadow of who you were.
That is what you have left us,
shadow memories, dust particles,
a roaring deluge of love,
the steel of your friendship.
This the only compromise that life,
has left to guide all of us,
to somewhere.
2021, Donald Harbour
There is a forgotten point in the past,
when first our paths converged.
We were far too young to know it,
as threads of friendship bound us.
Destiny set us on our separate journey,
stretching those golden fibers.
But, they were always there, unbroken,
tugging at the heart’s memories.
Whenever life becomes contrite and mean,
I often think of you and smile.
Remembering your laughter and joy,
we are sixteen again, singing Doo-wop.
Possessed by Brill Cream and Juicy Fruit,
Rock ‘n Roll knights charging forth.
Shod in Penny Loafers, armored in Old Spice,
we had swallowed the pill of innocence.
A marvelous foundation on which to stand,
God-smacked, age replaced it with reality.
Our dreams the glue to a kismet’s circle,
each step through time has led to today.
Through it you have always been my brother,
eternity can never change nor take that away.
If I find no other fortune, you are a treasure,
unblemished, shining, uncounted and valued.
©2021 Donald C. Harbour
When I was younger, I dreamed of giants,
overly grandiose thoughts, beliefs,
impetuous desires, falsehoods, contradictions.
Now that I have aged, none of those
quaking trees of life remain, only
fallen timbers, a mountain of antiquated bones.
No stench of the decay lingers,
there is only a sense of stale stagnant air,
dried husks litter the path, detritus of the past.
Did I slaughter them, I the giant killer,
or did time become the immortal villain.
Cronus wielding a scythe of minutiae.
They become unnoticed, small things, until they
culminate in a shower of tiny arrows, piercing
the flesh, reaching into a once ambitious soul,
The trivializing of being, a fusillade,
pointed disappointments and failures,
missed chances and opportunities.
Count not the past it is dead , buried,
nor the possibility of tomorrow, count
the day, the only truth is its brief reality.
©2021 Donald Harbour
I have watched and listened,
Suffered from contradictions,
Those gaps in a man’s life.
There are misconceptions,
Blatant mental posturing,
Delusions defining a man.
They are misguided, shortsighted,
Easily manipulated, injected,
The vinegar of male inoculation.
These vocal dystopian needlers,
Miserable cretins of neutering,
Harpies eating the grist of manhood.
We need not fear them, ignore them,
Pay no attention to them, for
A man is no one’s beast of burden.
Some may think this folly of conjecture,
But, it bears the soul of Occam,
Simply put, we are what we are.
Acceptance is a harsh reality, truth,
The granite laid by human history,
It is the blame game between sexes.
Wasted posturing, justifying micro-niches,
The piddling prattling of wannabe’s,
Never reaching the true stature of a man.
Hold this truth close to your breast,
There is hidden danger in masculinity,
Subtle skirmishes can have dire consequences.
Even a male praying mantis is comfortable,
Feeling safe in his exoskeleton,
Until a satisfied female devours him.
©2021 Donald Harbour
Are we not possessed of possessions.
Things in transition from one state,
to becoming something other than they are.
Every pot and pan, each book and tablet,
a garden, and home, all transitory.
Even the thread that binds a shirt,
changing, neither a possession nor
possessed, used, not owned, allowed.
This mind that writes these words,
changing, what was thought possessed,
now gone, here given to the reader.
We are all things that ever were,
recycled particles of the cosmos,
what we will become is never kept.
The only real thing that can be possessed
is this moment, this second of time,
a sweep of a tick-tock on the eternal clock.
Things do not belong to us, as we do not
belong to ourselves, for we are only,
an earthly dalliance of creation, and
that too is a possession of eternity.
©2021 Donald Harbour
Morning is prying at my eyelids,
a nagging beggar demanding my attention.
It’s begging bowl, gray clouds scudding,
held in the palm of a chilly autumn wind,
the rim loudly banging on the front door.
Somewhere a rooster has offered a raspy croak,
a half hearted frosted cockle-doodle-do,
not a pleasant outlook for dawn’s events.
You are buried in the down and cotton covers,
a brick wall plastered with blankets.
I feeling a prospective male conjugal urge,
The rooster rules the rooster’s, roust.
There is a barnyard hierarchy, pecking order,
one’s order deduced by the clucking hens.
The mares nips chasing the stud away.
Sows nudge the boar from the trough.
The bull levies his interest subtly,
modulated to the cows seasonal expectation.
You are not that tolerant, judgmental,
you are a woman ruled by the unknown.
I, a furnace of heat, you a chasm of ice,
would that you could thaw, melt into me,
then, awaken to my, full throated cockle-doodle-do.
©2020, Donald Harbour
Donald Harbour Poetry 