Kiersten Skylar

Kiersten Skylar’s a skylark, a bird on the wing,

With a smile that melts winter and brings in the Spring.

There’s a song in the air; there’s a change on the way.

Kiersten Skylar and Spring share a birthday today.

It has been many months since I last saw the sun.

I have wondered if winter would ever be done.

But my warm-hearted Kiersten found sunshine’s first ray,

And she gave it to Spring for their birthday today.

You can look all around and I think you should know,

You may find a few faint melting traces of snow,

But you will not find Winter. They’ve chased it away,

Kiersten Skylar and Spring, for their birthday today.

Kiersten Skylar, my skylark, this day is all yours,

With your heart even bigger than all out of doors

And I’ll run in the sun, and I’ll sing and I’ll play

Because you and the Spring share a birthday today.

A Poem for Joy

My mother-in-law passed away last December.  I asked my Dad if he would write poem for her service.

Joy Engen

I close my eyes and I can see
A distant campfire glow,
And somewhere in my heart I hear
A voice I'll always know

Whisper soft and trembling as
The first faint notes begin,
And now the music swells and grows
With others joining in.

There in that music I can find
A time that flowed with art,
When life was just a songbook sweet
That Joy could sing by heart.

For life is but the hands we hold,
The hugs to show we care,
The simple campfire story told
Of songs, of warmth we share.

                 ...

Dear Joy, the songs you cannot sing,
Your children's children will,
And love's sweet notes will linger on,
A song you're singing still.

Eulogy for Charmaine Gorski

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   Walk boldly as you did long years ago.   Patrolling the dock at Middle Lake in Michigan, your voice rising in laughter.   I can hear you now, with your signature phrase:   “Jokes! Jokes! Jokes!” …and then upending my canoe as I paddled madly, striving in vain to get out of your reach.

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   Your life was not all you could have hoped and yet, it took its place in the great tumbling kaleidoscope in which all of us live, and love, and forever try to fin our footing.
For life is but the story told
Of hearts we touch and hands we hold,
Of fleeting moments we forget—
Of fleeting moments, gone, and yet
That somehow do not fade away
But burrow in our hearts to stay,
Making a place of lasting worth--
This Garden of Needin’ we call earth.

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   They all live gently on, those moments.   You welcomed me into your life the moment we met, at the house on Washington Street, as I came up the steps and in through the porch.   That welcome never faltered, even if at times you and I both did.

You were confined for years to a wheelchair and to a bed, and yet you never lost what I used to call your Charmanity.   I said it to rhyme with humanity, and I mean it.
You taught me that friendship and family and loyalty are fover.   You paid attention when I didn’t and you held on when I was letting go, and you wouldn’t let me.   You reminded me that these are the threads that bind us forever into one fabric, that make of our lives something more than alone we could ever achieve.

Just one more time, Charmaine, in memory, one more time...   There was a tree outside your window that reflected the passing of the seasons and connected you to all that lay beyond and out of reach.   You cherished the connections.   You reminded me that grace and goodness are flowers that burst from the soil where we least expect them.
For all of its heartache, the world is still a place of beauty.   The things that God has given us, like the tree outside your window, make it so.   The people that God has given us keep it so…For the beauty you kept in my life, and for not letting go, I thank you.   Go gently, dear Charmaine, dear sister, go gently to your rest.

VI @ LXXXX

  
VI @ LXXXX

Dearest mother of mine, you have passed 89,
Which distinguishes you from the rabble,
But I have one request if I may be so bold--
Could you please try to ease up on Scrabble?

I must note with dismay that you frequently play,
As your hapless opponents you're crushing,
Using cuss words like 'tup', which when I looked them up
Would set even a longshoreman blushing.

And a chortle or more I could simply ignore
When you know you're about to defeat me--
Must you kick up your heels and dissolve into squeals
Just to rub it in each time you beat me?

Let us speak, too, of Rage.   I would think at your age
One might seek out some shred of decorum,
Yet you shout out with glee, 'Janet's got minus three'
And the games go your way when you score 'em.

Now your birthday has come, so let's bang on the drum
From Toronto to Tennessee to Texas...
In the quaint way they wrote it when you were first born,
Happy L and a whole bunch of Xs.

Little poem for Kardynn Brooke

Little poem for Kardynn Brooke...

Sitting by the stream of water,
Playing cards with my grand-daughter,
She says, "Go fish, Grandpa, look!"
Drops her card in, jumps in after,
Saved by Grandpa, squeals of laughter,
Kardynn out safe, card in brook.

Annika and the Year of Birthdays

Annika had a birthday and from what I’ve heard folks tell,

The ice cream was delicious and the birthday cake as well.

The party was a big success, leading Annika to say,

This year I’m going to have a birthday each and every day!

The next day she turned 7 and the next day she turned 8,

And all her friends brought presents and came help her celebrate,

And everything was wonderful and all the parties fun.

Already, April Fool’s Day, she was turning 21.

On the 17th of May, she celebrated 67.

By the 30th of June, she turned a hundred and eleven.

The presents all piled up until, no matter how she tried

She couldn’t fit them in her room and had to sleep outside.

And so the parties go each day, and all the fun goes on

And there’ll be fun and games until the birthday year is gone.

And every day a birthday cake, and every cake a bean,

And every day a crown and every crown a king or queen.

So Happy Birthdays, Annika, I hope for next year, you

Can still blow all the candles out, when you’re 372!

SKI BIRTHDAY

SKI BIRTHDAY

For her birthday, KIERSTEN’s letters plan to sneak away and ski,

Watch the ENTRIES and the exits to the ski slopes—you will see.

(Let me here INSERT a warning—do not turn away your eyes

For each letter in her name can ski black diamonds if it TRIES.)

Oh, that birthday girl! Her letters now have all begun to STIR.

They won’t SIT still for a minute—they’re an awful lot like her!

They have made IT look so easy; things are worse than I had feared.

All those letters that I love so much have simply disappeared.

Yes, her letters all have gone, but wait, you heard it first from me,

They’ve been spotted on the ski slopes. Look for SKIERS, THEN you’ll see.

Look for SKIERS, TEN or twenty at the lodge when they arrive

And you’ll find that ski bum KIERSTEN celebrating birthday 5.

Rita & Bruce

Rita walks down the aisle and the smile on her face
Is the sun as it shines on this high, holy place
But the smile in her eyes is a sun of her own
And it shines down the aisle but for Bruce all alone.

He is proud of that aisle and his pride is not wrong.
He has made it himself—it’s an aisle a mile long.
See the far Shenandoah, the paths that they know,
From these hills high above to the valley below.

Now see Rita, who’s looking at Bruce with a grin,
She is thinking—he’s wishing he’d hang-glided in.
Oh, but Rita is wrong. Bruce is thinking, no doubt,
Not of hang-gliding in but of hang-gliding out.

“If I just had my tandem, a bit of a breeze,
We could go on ‘I do’ through that gap in the trees…
‘Bruce, do you take this woman?’ I take her all right.
If the thermals are good, we’ll stay up until night.”

So if they disappear, just you look up above,
They’ll be taking a ride on that thermal called love.
Here’s a toast to love’s journey, each day a step more,
For you fall in love first, then you glide, then you soar.

Rita, Bruce, to tomorrow, a new life begun,
May you soar, ever more, ever close to the sun,
Here’s to happiness, health, may the love you have known
Keep you ever aloft under skies all your own,
Keep you ever aloft under skies all your own.