Who will remember

When sunset fades to night
Will you remember it
Can you feel the beginning
Of its day, its journey
Will you reflect on the moments
Of each melody it sang
The tinkling distant bells of wind
The crystal magic of its light
Painting azure skies with white clouds
The green of the grass and trees
Flowers yearning for a bee kiss
Ripples in a brook, ocean surf
Life awakened, vibrant, joyous
These tracks in time never again
Each minute of each day different
Each sunset a unique treasure
Living and dying in its course
If not you, then who will remember
When you can no longer remember
Who will remember your sunset
When sunset fades to night

The golden hue of age

The golden hue of age.

The arboreal tapestry of life
shimmers, playing with the light,
cascaded rays on the floor of time.
All the souls nestled as leaves
on the branches of creation wait
for autumn to be collected
in a great cosmic basket.
We choose to be so different but,
we are all one in the same, each
grasping our place on a twig.
When the breath of end time
sweeps across the stars we will
shudder together falling in layers.
This beauty is not in the green bud,
it is the luster of the golden hue of age,
a gentle fluttering to join the pattern,
woven into the fabric of Nature’s cloth
where the hands of Gaia tend the loom.

Copyright: 2010, Donald Harbour

Son I love you

LtJG, William C. Harbour, USN, 1943

My father never said he loved me,
Except on his death bed through cracked lips.
The stench of cancerous death rancor,
Hugging the memories and the tears.
He had a peculiar smell about him,
A mixture of cigarettes, whiskey, age,
Not unpleasant but uncomfortable.
There was a clamoring in his passing
Something unseen pulling at his body
Until there was nothing left but a shell.
When his failing lungs finally gave up life,
It was with a sigh escaping a gasping mouth.
Death is not pretty, it is a morphine stupor,
Life slipping, hastened by a drugged nightmare,
Dulled feeling, the inability to nod to reality.
The touch of where there once was pulse,
A simple choice of words, “Well, he’s gone!”
Still, after all these years the words echo,
Flailing in a darkened room of my mind,
Trying to find a finger hold, a grasp,
But they cannot for their utterance was,
Too late, too overshadowed by death.
That halting whisper, dulled by an antiseptic pallor,
“Son, I love you,” is there truth here…is there?
The question is a stone to carry, its weight burdens life.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour