My college roommate surprised me with a pure gift. I was speechless. It was a document I had not seen for almost 27 years – a collection of my poetry that I collected for a college class.

I will post the introduction here with the first poem with the rest to follow. Please keep in mind I was very young when I wrote these – some even as a teenager. But the people I wrote about were real and I thought had something to impart. Also a bit of a preview of the future. As I reflect on what much of the journey was about, a good portion was about telling stories – mine and others.

I thought that made a lot of it worth it. The highs, the lows, and all the in-betweens. The stories matter because the story matters.

May yours be an interesting and enduring one.

Life.

A journey in which we are nothing more than nomads wandering from place to place in search of temporary rest. No final destination, no ultimate sanctuary that we must reach. The meaning is in the paths we walk down and the fellow travelers we encounter along the way.

Some walk beside us, some pass us by from the direction we are traveling, and some we pass by the roadside. And so the shifting winds of chance and time dictate our stories, unwritten sentences in an almost inaccessible book whose future pages remain hidden and whose past chapters are echoes from a non-existing source.

From the soup kitchens, nursing homes, colleges, and churches of human communities, an almost infinite number of stories remain untold. Stories that have drawn lines on faces, tales that have stolen the passion of living from eyes, and memories that have dulled the frequency and amplitude of the heartbeat. But life goes on and the journey continues. Some say we study history to prevent the past from repeating itself. Some say there is nothing new under the sun, that what is and what is to come has already been. I agree with both.

Knowledge from others gives us tools to face our own problems that we will surely encounter in our lives. These
problems many times have universal and common themes that express themselves in many variations.

I want to tell these stories so that others may see and understand life from a different perspective. They are humbling because they remind us of our frailty and our mortality.

However, they may also contain hope and a sense of relation for those of us who have experienced moments of sorrow and grief. Christ once said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” This statement seems vague and contrary to truth, but to me it says that he understood that life is filled with bitterness and pain. That life is far from perfect, many times unfair and cruel. But through the angst-filled yearnings for resolution and seemingly unanswered prayers, the light is there, comfort exists. Not all these stories contain obvious light, but some do. It is up to the reader to decide whether to search for that light in the story.

I have chosen to narrate the lives of the people that I have encountered so far in my own brief journey. I have learned that men, women, and babies cry. I have also learned that we all bleed red. Grief transcends natural and artificial barriers with its disinterested nature. Strangely enough, it is at our moments of sorrow that we truly know who we are. It is at the lowest points of life that true growth in an emotional and spiritual sense can begin. I desire to portray people
in their most naked state, for who we really are. The masks we wear so well burn away in the fires of emotional hells.

Another aspect that I see in grief is personal sadness at the sight of others in a state of sorrow. True humanity seeks to bear others burdens and to alleviate pain. While it is not possible to grasp the actual magnitude of another’s pain, trying to understand it to the fullest teaches compassion and patience. These poems in this project are meant to be markers along the proverbial road of life. It is my hope that the passers-by will recognize and learn from them.

Richerd

I talk to the old man sitting in front of me
His bed undone, room unkempt, he complains…
A photograph now faded by time hangs silently
He will not look at it, it is too painful, too real
For the memory of youth only brings regret
From a wasted life, now slowly passing away
He speaks loudly, can’t hear himself, the nurse says
But I know better, his deafness is nothing
Compared to the silence of words unspoken, love untold
A single flower sits on the table by his bed
I don’t think he knows it is there, wilting away
He talks about the weather, winter is coming again
Not as cold, though, as constant loneliness
I tell him it’s time for me to go, he’s tired
He falls asleep and I know he’s dreaming
Of grandchildren on his knee, watching the setting sun.