Gotta to love youth

Pure bluster and ignorance

Infinite wisdom and no experience

Until the night sky lights up

With the moment you have been waiting for

But did not expect

The love of your life

New adjectives enters one’s vocabulary

“Clueless” is the primary one

And now the mirror has prominent purpose

“Why didn’t I brush my hair?”

But no amount of logic blocks

Our headlong rush

Into the grooming process of a relationship

Remember, “Jump?” “How high?”

The dance of love is so serious

We want to get it so right

But we are so ill prepared

How do you pass a test on relationship?

Is it the money that is earned?

The year of the car?

Size of the house?

After fifty years

Which is a fair sample

There does not seem to be a benchmark

A grade on the marriage certificate

But at the end of the day

A long day

A simple “pass-fail”

Will suffice

With a well worn smile

FXC 9/7/19

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Good Morning! It’s only fair

We talk early as we often did

Phones always seemed to connect us

Imagining you as we spoke

Even now your smile

Is in front of me

Your voice echoes

Your little boy, so grown

Has come to visit

From many miles away

Such a sweet young man You raised

Thoughtful, giving

Certainly inherited and developed qualities

He grapples with meaning sometimes with out you

But the path you set

Holds him straight

To this day

Sadness could envelope my heart

Yet your young man

Let’s the sun shine

On all the gifts you gave

Sweet lady!

FXC 8/31/19

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Have an in house critic

Who has the opinion

That I’m mumbling to myself

With these ruminations

And yet, yet

The voices talking in my head

Are what I hear back

From you all

This world we share,

So strange, so brutal

So nurturing, so unpredictable

Oftentimes no good choice

For faith, politics, politics, or even family

Seems like having to do the best we can is all we have

With animals it clear, survival of the fittest

With us seems like it’s often just chance

Get so bogged down with endless headlines

Of tilted agendas and egregious behaviors

Always distracted by the sensational

And yet within in us all needing to be nurtured

The slim morning light of dawn

That defines us to be good

I know what is evil

You know too

It’s not a political foe, or an opposing religion

Not a wayward family member

It’s not letting the daylight show what we CAN be

We have an unending quest to make ourselves better

And in doing so we become OUR new world

It is real clear

You and I know it

Traipse down the seemingly endless path of erratic and negative behavior

Or stand for what is right

We are together in this

Now don’t know how all will end

But see no alternative but to hold hands

Working to be more than a haphazard happenstance

FXC 8/24/19

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Sitting across from you

At your kitchen table

Searching your empty eyes

For a hint of your dark sojourn

Into the pits of depression

What, what was wrong with me that I didn’t see the red flags

Now, now just trying to stench the flow of hope spilling from you

Such a difference when reason rules

Now just subject to the ebb and flow of hope and belief

Want to hold you so much for so long

Till you are back laughing with us

Just can’t know that day will happen

Praying, working to hold you up

On my back if need be

Please, please know you are good and loved

FXC 8/22/19

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So my memory has been tracking downward

Since whatever happened happened

Visits to the grocery store must be with blinders on

As inevitably an energetic old friend will notice me

And insist on a ‘how are you conversation’

It would be fine if I really knew who they were

Rather than a snapshot of someone familiar

But not familiar enough to remember

So a possible home remedy to fading memory

Digitized memory

Scan hundreds and hundreds

Okay thousands of old family and friend pictures

Label them

Don’t know if while in the grocery

I could pull out my phone to scan the chatty friend

To determine who they were

Nonetheless

A method does exist to prop me up in social settings

However two miscalculations occur here

The first is labeling all the digitized photos

Maybe if I had one child and they had one spouse and one child

This would be a doable project

But four children with spouses and then grandchildren

Crazy

And do you realize how some of your own children and grandchildren

Look alike at various points of their existence

Right off the top then have to refer to my in house Wikipedia live in friend

To fill in the multiple blanks of digitized photo recognition

Needless to say this would really help

Does it help when a familiar face starts off a conversation with,

“Do you remember when,?”

Maybe there is a digitized audio memory app

But at least I can hit the grocery store again

FXC 8/17/19

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Facebook Friends?

Crazy new way to meet people

On the WWW

Friends of friends

Relatives of relatives

Pictures and stories

Never would have known them

Without Facebook

But seriously a mixed bag

All friends come with baggage

Some religious, some political, some with advice

Periodically strangled

With unwanted beliefs or advice

Just block them

But then discovered

50% of my heretofore friends

Possessed opposite beliefs of mine

Can’t live with that or them

And yet bubbling up

From the inconsistencies of politics, religion and advice

Is the very old adage

“A friend in need is a friend indeed ”

And I really do need you

FXC 8/14/19

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Oftentimes depending on ones’s faith

A candle is lit by both families

Who are uniting their children in marriage

That one candle then becomes the symbol

Of the solidarity of the families and friends

Supporting the new couple

But like so much in life

The young couples’s life

Starts with their hopes and desires

Some planned some not

As in any relationship

Ups and downs

Anxiety and enthusiasm

Seem to wax and wane

Maybe even in the same day

Jobs, children, houses

All create their own distractions

For a loving relationship

And yet the magic of ‘love’

Grows and matures

Unless it doesn’t

Slowly imperceptibility

Cracks in a relationship can occur

None can judge as each couple is unique

But three factors can never be forgotten

For the magic of ‘us’ to continue

Unimpeachable belief in your spouse

Might the spouse have weaknesses, etc, cleaning, finances

Yet at the end of the day your spouse is THE one

Impregnable confidence in your self

Are you the richest, tallest smartest

Maybe not but you are as good as they get

Finally the rock solid belief

That as a couple you two are the

Best for each other, your children and for your world

If faith, hope and charity are nurtured between a couple

The candle stands a very good chance of burning brightly

FXC 8/11/19

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Don’t quite get it

How did we all come to get raised

A million different ways I think

We all watched behaviors of other families

Some were praised by our parents

Some castigated

Most of our parents observations of others

Pointed the way for us to follow

But there never has been a pass fail system

For being a child or a parent

Or for that matter a member of this society

Yet all that being as it is

The question on the table today

Is there a college degree for marriage

Haven’t seen one yet

50% of marriages end in divorce

Many, many are not even bothering

To take the plunge these days

Why?

The learning curve is incredibly steep in marriage

Oh, sure usually the first few years are filled

With Wanderlust or just lust

Of course that is presuming that

Cohabitation didn’t occur before the marriage

But then children might enter the picture and jobs

Now never did see a class on handling that

No book smarts to guide

And then cataclysmically

Children, jobs all vaporize

You are now staring

At a selfie and your loved one

That’s what I’m talking about

Now what do you do

You are unleashed to pursue dreams

Some of which you didn’t even know you had

Are both spouses on board

Sometimes

Sometimes not

Potentially a whole new educational field

A college degree of finishing the deal

Might be alone on this one

Really shouldn’t be

After fifty years should have seen this coming

Have to presume I’ll get tutored

As I did for my first degree

BS in “Surviving”

FXC 8/8/19

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Not really conceivable now

That we became friends at 11

Actually met you with others

Most who are still with us today

We were embarking on a journey

To change the world

To shepherd lost souls

1962 seems but a distant moment

Yet it changed my life and it’s perspective

We joined hearts and hands in our quest

Most of us were unable to complete that journey

Plagued by doubts and distractions

Nonetheless friends we have remained

Interrupted by other commitments

Family, work travel

Yet now we sit together

On Monday mornings at 9

Not to rehash what might have been

Or what could still be

But now just to smile and bask

In the he warmth of our

Old, tired, but so satisfying friendship

Thank God for you all

I love you guys and always will

FXC 8/7/19

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Ah, the years of toiling

With Mother Nature

By tilling, planting and nurturing in rain and sun

Tomatoes, cucumbers even pumpkins, canning

Young children running, chasing rabbits away

The scene fading to flower beds

As knees and backs wince and creek with the seasons

Grandchildren now playing with the dirt and watering

But the last grandchild now 3 starting preschool

Leaves the garden for us to manage

As the hot wafts of August days stifle breathing

We already look to the cooler fall

Ever hopeful

That our time in our yard

Will continue

Not wanting to accept or understand

We will not be able to always collaborate with nature

But oh praying so fervently

We will always be able to

See and smell the flowers

Watch the birds and squirrels

Of our life’s garden

FXC 8/6/19

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