Short Poems from 2020
Expression
A tightness of the chest
Something’s trying to escape
But it’s held inside your body
By words you’ll never make
Yearning to be shouted
In your heart it squirms around
To escape through art or writing
Through movement, or through sound
Counting Sheep
Beside me in comfort - the girl that I love
Beside me in slumber - the girl that I love
But no matter the number - of sheep from above
I lie awake dreaming - of the girl that I love
Grumppitting
When you tell your SO a dad-joke during a serious conversation and they respond with “lfgdjhfdssjdlajslkdjals”
She gurgled and raggled and snurkled
Grumppitted! fibbited! yordeld!
But underneath all that she burbled
She giggled and smiled and chortled
To Capture You (Briefly) in Metaphors
To Emma for our second anniversary. For some context: she usually drifts off at night in the dim red light of my headlamp, as I try to cram a little bit more reading into my day.
Cleansing spring air
Sunshine with friends
Warm summer nights
Days without ends
End dark and close
Illuminated in red
Warm soft breaths
Beside me in bed
Happy anniversary
I will always love you
To many more years
but to only two, too
The Blinking of an Eye
On Oct 27th, 2020, my Dad checked himself in to the hospital in Ottawa late in the night for really bad heart burn. He ended up having a heart attack and getting emergency double-bypass surgery. Thankfully, after a couple months of convalesence he is almost fully recovered.
I think he must have suspected something abnormal, because his life has been full of heart-burn and not of hospital-visits, but it still came as a shock for all of us. By the blessing of being a couple timezones behind Ontario I was the only one awake when he got the diagnosis, and he was adamant that I not wake up my Mom or Sister.
Guys are dumb, right? My Mom has stayed by him most of his life, and to give her a good nights sleep and spare her the anxiety he decided it would be better if she didn’t know he was having a heart attack. Is that what “love is blind” is supposed to mean?
Anyways, I stayed up all night and the following day, just looking off into space, and I wrote this poem the follwing night to try to lay some turbulent thoughts to rest.
My Dad had a heart attack - he’s alright, but it was pretty scary
I sat up on the couch most of the night, just vacantly staring
Drifting in and out of sleep, and wondering why
Wondering if my ‘young’ Dad, was going to die
We think some things are constant, they’re not worth clinging onto
but then one day they’re gone, just memories to haunt you
So I’ll cling a moment now, cherish everything I have
and give thanks to god and doctors, for leaving me my dad
The world wades around us, and time creeps softly by
but then all at once it changes, the blinking of an eye