Category: Uncategorized

I don’t know what I did to you?

(I only ask because you told me to fuck off!”)

Your anger is misplaced , it cuts me but it is coming from somewhere beyond me.

The way you disengage, and turn the page, the way you check out and glaze oever, not caring about anything.

All this belittling and disdain, written all over your face,

no idea how much has been given to you and no gratitude for any of it.

Then there is you,

all balcked out eyes,

trmbling fingers,

frowning face,

sarcastic words.

Then there is the one who asked me what a Dad is?

He said he did asked because he has never had one.

So, I told him that a Dad is hte one man who you hate growing up and then come to respect more than anyone you know and if you are lucky you get to tell him before it is too late.

(sometimes though, it will be too late.)

He is the one who will hold you up even when you have nort asked and don’t even he did until much later on,

the one who will hold the door open for your long after you have slammed it shut.

I remember the girl,

I saw her crying, yesterday, big tears from lovely eyes,

I wondered if anyione would be there to catch those tears that fell along her cheeks?

(I knew it had to be that boy with the sagging pants and all that out loud bravado.)

stepping all overt your joy and confidence just waiting for his cue and never failing to notice.

Both of you all fire and force,

you, all sweetness and fine mist,

he all swagger and rebellion,

She a knockout smile and blond hair, eyes red from crying and wearing her heart on her sleeve.

(there it is easy for him to see which is why he hurts her so easily.)

T. S. Deary

5/4/22

P.A.F.M

Echo – Sound or series of sounds caused by reflection of sound waves from a surface back to the listener.

Stir of Echoes – to venture or depart from one of usual or preferred place.

Sunrise develops into sunset and repeats itself through time,

what goes away comes back again until it has run it’s course,

the time is unknown,

only God, the sum of all things can comprehend,

sometimes the resolution comes in echoes,

that stir nostalgia and remain long after the quiet of grief descends.

Listen and learn,

let these echoes become solidified as memory,

tune into how the world continues to turn,

those echoes are valuable mental property.

It has been a few years since I stood at the top of those stairs, where the desk sits and that mirror hangs on the wall,

reflecting the big window over the door and it has been many years since I climbed and descended those stairs to the den, where the stove glowed in the Winter and we hung our clothes to dry after sledding and where he sat and read his paper or watched the news and where I sat with my friends and my wife near the sliding glass doors,

near all those portraits hanging on the painted walls ,

generations of family standing and watching, silent over those who gathered there,

once and always a family but one now gone their own ways but still heard in their own distinct echoes of the past meeting in the past and present and always listening for the future.

It has been a few years since I came to the top of those stairs and saw the black chair where he used to sit and go through the mail, his white hair contrasted so strongly against the black and shining leather.

It was there that I left him one day at the end of June , high Summer, but I saw Winter in his eyes.

(when I left it began to rain and thunder echoed off the side of the house…)

It has been a few years since I sought to escape out onto the big deck off the kitchen to sit under the shade of all those trees,

accompanied by the memory of him blowing bubbles for Meaghan on a summer day.

Such a contrast to the Thanksgiving when the kids raked leaves and jumped in piles surrounded by air that was only eighteen degrees.

(again the house was warm and we remembered and spoke about our thanks for all the other times the house was that way.)

This was the place everyone wanted to be, friends gathered there, in the comfortable den, with the warmth of the fire, the place we always went to after whatever was happening had ended, always through the side door,

(for years it never locked right.)

There was the room on the side, we pretended that we doing homework, but really spent the time smoking cigarettes, half hanging out the window.

Those creaking boards upstairs – we always knew when he was up and awake, always early, always with his coffee and always planning and guiding towards the future.

Not always seeing eye to eye, but never completely closing the door and always leaving a light on.

Now a new chapter is being written and I wonder if the new ones living there can pick up the threads of words and sentences that we once spoke and somehow weave the strands into the fabric of the lives they will build there.

(all the while we will continue those stories and rhythms and cadence from then until now and on to tomorrow.)

The messages from summer Sundays and graduation days,

from christening days and birthdays and then on to all the holidays that were shared sometimes all together and other times in pieces of the whole,

messages that hung and shined in the reflections of pictures, in faces and captured memories,

along the contours of the walls of the rooms where we grew up and where we told and retold stories and grew daily in reverberation and the return of echoes, stirring the memories and in the continuation of the legacy of our family’s life and times.

The echoes,

stir my heart and bring me joy,

they stir my mind and all these slender threads of memory that sustain and give life to those times that will never go silent no matter who stands at the top of those stairs to notice the changing of the leaves and whose hands a re warmed by the glow of a welcoming fire.

I remember when I was a child, lying on my bed as my mother covered me with the newly laundered blanket, it was as if it floated in the air and then settled down on top of me, such a pleasant memory to fall asleep to,

Later on, after I left the house the fog seemed to hover over the ground the same way the blanket seemed to float in the air,

both scenes were waiting for the sun, to wake the boy, ready for his day, and the grass waiting for the fog to lift and to become dry,

this is how the world moves on and on…

waiting for the life of the sun to shine and reminding us to live in light and not in darkness, just as the echoes remind us that the past has built the present and will guide is to the future.

“I regarded home as the place I left behind in order to come back to it afterward.”

Ernest Hemingway…

12 Cynthia Drive

You with the hoodie and the sarcastic comments, talking tough and dismissing all that disrupts your world view,

then you, beauty queen, with the resting bitch face and not much else.

(all is well as long as your boyfriend brings you Starbucks in the morning.)

Disdain for me,

I am too old,

I know nothing,

because you are invincible and will never die,

who would ever listen to someone like you?

(They say!)

You who claims reading books is among his greatest pleasures?

Memories are pressed between the pages of the old man’s mind and he relives them all the time, wondering if that girl will have any memories other than the way she manipulates that young man that waits for her after class?

All their memories are digital and there are no mental movies to remember the past,

around which to reminisce and bond.

(does anyone have a charger?)

They don’t see how memories fade with time,

and how I almost understand how you dismiss me and then I laugh to myself at all your shallow replies and less than thoughtful comments.

T.S. Deary

4/19/22

I see right through you,

deep within my vision,

I can see your invisibility,

and I know they are real.

Your lies untold…

I can see right through you,

and in between all the harsh words and the false bravado,

I know who you are…

Your face gives you away…

Your lies untold.

I can hear what you never say.

(it sounds like you are scared.)

All those words, like pointed arrows and fingers, always with three pointed back at you.

Lies untold…

Bless him Father for he has sinned…

Forgive him Father for he knows not what he has done.

(still he does it anyway.)

I can her what you don’t say.

I can see what you keep hidden.

(what you think you keep hidden.)

What you do behind closed doors and that you pray no one will ever know.

(your acting so tough is just a lie…)

T.S. Deary

4/8/22

Ignorantia sit beatitudo

It’s like talking to statues all day,

betraying no emotion and seeking nothing other than the occupation of space.

Someone, someday, should tell them how difficult it is to stand in front of their unblinking eyes, trying to break through their ignorance.

Standing and staring at blind eyes, trying to get them to see and hardened hearts to feel, only to be met with stares and blank expressions from hardened, stunted souls.

Someday, maybe they will see,

that the earth does not revolve around them and that others have thoughts and expressions that are much more valid than what they dismiss on a daily basis,

much more valid than what they see on phone screens and the bag of weed they have hidden in their pants.

(all the while thinking they are so clever and free.)

Having been them before,

I think now,

I deserve better than these constant interruptions and mental games of avoidance.

Since no one listens,

we have all stopped speaking.

T.S. Deary

2/18 – 2/21/22

The moutain wind moved across that field,

wildflowers swaying in the wind and summer air,

a hand painted scene of the almighty’s yield,

creation begotten and made by him alone.

(then came rain puring off the mountains all around the valley.)

The found path was dimly lit due to how densely it was packed together,

river running over smooth rocks and felled trees.

In summer the trout are in the deeper pools and will rise to almost any fly,

I remember how many times we walked those trails called home only by hunger and the setting sun.

In summer black bears came down from those mountains at night and in the early morning, leaving their marks in massive trees,

some even walking over the wildflower fields in lunar illumination then back to the mountains to sleep the day away.

We collected memories,

and pressed them between,

mental pages,

in our minds,

kept as if they,

were some,

of those,

wildflowers,

pressed,

between,

the pages,

of old books,

then kept on the shelf,

in the house,

to be read,

on long nights,

when those flowers,

become faded,

and fall asleep for the winter,

and those bears,

have begun their slumber,

until those,

flowers,

grow again,

to sway in the wind,

of summer days and,

the breath of boys who run,

through them to refresh their memories.

T.S. Deary

10/14/21

The half cut field of new hay was quiet as we drove by.

The rolls and bales of newly cut hay were scattered all around.

(no discernable pattern.)

Under the light of the coming dawn,

and the still visible moon the scene had a rural, earthy quality, a pastoral tribute to a time gone by.

Bright harvest moon signalling the ending of one phase and the begining of a new one.

The silence of the field would be interrupted later by mechnaical tractors,

back and forth, in rows,

then wagons to pick up the massive rolls and put them onto trucks.

(sold later for thirty and forty dollars each.)

Later the harvest moon would be replaced by the sun,

losing some of its intense summer grip,

turning the green hay more and more brown and more and more dry by the hour.

T.S. Deary

9/24/21

Clearly they know,

picking on the girl,

harmless banter,

harmless words,

they know,

uncivlized little fucks,

unleashing words,

directed at her,

then hiding, beind smirks that hide narcisstic indifference.

“It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me” … chanting in unison.

She sits quietly, probably making gestures to them in return for their pointed words.

Smart enough to do so quietly and to not draw attention to herself,

not lacking in individuality,

she has much grace,

all poise,

to their fractured, disheveled, interruption.

Oh, how they try to cut to the bone,

sitting in the corner – careful to project strength, yet so alone.

Under breath comments so cruel,

procaliming innocence, so grand and then playing the fool.

Then more comments of non verbal nature then reactions designed to draw attention from her.

Then it becomes clear to me that they have been afraid,

unable to look inside and admit to all the bad mistakes they have made.

They will never be able to see it so clear,

acting the fool.

T.S. Deary

12/28/21