image

photo credit: tolbert

i watched the roses die

in the empty corner

disney mouse with his football

another holding a bat and glove

 

pig and a baseball

empty walls and bicycle

built for music

that plays softly like a serenade

 

pieces of life don’t measure too long

on any scale

adonai, acoustic, majors and minors

metrics, length, pounds, ounces, grams

 

in the end there is a corner

where roses die

and red fades away

and the color scale

doesn’t matter

anymore

© 2012, tolbert. All rights reserved.

avatar tolbert (24 Posts)

Born in Virginia and raised in North Carolina, I have Southern roots that were extracted when I lived close enough to Berkeley in the late sixties and early seventies to taste the influences of the pursuit of freedom. As a student at San Jose State University I watched William Kuntsler expound on the values of free speech and he offered more education in an hour, on the lawn by the baseball diamond than most professors gave in a full semester. Married for thirty years, I have two grown daughters and three grandkids,..and two Boston Terriers.


2 Comments

  1. avatar
    Cher Duncombe
    July 10, 2012 at 8:33 am ·

    “pieces of life don’t measure too long

    on any scale”

    I loved the poem, Tolbert, and this line is especially heart-wrenching in capturing what some of us feel—- until a light shines our wounded psyches. Roses die and colors fade, but “there is a corner” meant to be found in which life grows and blooms once more. That is my fervent wish for you.

    Your poetic words are always filled with enormous depth and resounding beauty, even in the darkest of corners.
    Cher Duncombe recently posted..dead rosesMy Profile

  2. avatar
    Dani Heart
    July 10, 2012 at 10:08 am ·

    Profound sadness here. Very beautiful words.

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