Neil McKay's Shared Poems

Sometimes we lie together,
Not as lovers but as friends.
Talk all night,
Stare at the stars,
Tell scary stories,
Look for flying saucers.
I think I saw one just now.
Inevitably the back of my hand
Grazes yours and you reciprocate.
obligingly or instinctively?
Either way I'll take it.

I still have the stories, I tell them to my sons
You grew up with nothing, medicine bottles as toy cars
Dirt as a racetrack. For a time, you lived in
two boxcars with your mother and father and siblings
One boxcar to sleep in, one with a hole in the roof
and a stove for cooking
You joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and worked
in national parks and traveled west from Missouri.
You joined the Navy, did your tour of duty on an LST,
What they referred to as a Large Slow-moving Target,
Fueling warships in the Atlantic.
Ending up in Seattle where you met Janey,
In a boarding house in Seattle.
You loved her with a strong silent love
A dependable love, a quiet love
You built a house for her mother
You built a life for eight children
Through hard times and sickness
Heart attack and cancer
You kept on loving her, loving us
Until you left us
I was 26
I was young
I was full of myself
I should have been full of you
Now you're gone
Your stories remain
Your face shows up in the mirror
Your soft and kind voice comes out of me
When I am full of grace
When I am full of you

It's raining and the sound of rubber on asphalt is intruding
Into my morning meditation
Each car, each truck, carrying my neighbors to their important destinations
Announces it's passing presence with a thick wet swooshing.
I sit and listen in my kitchen, it's too warm out to close the door,
As they pass, a new swoosh every second, then a pause,
As red lights at both ends of the road hold back the travelers,
Until, from both directions, they all come at once,
meeting in front of my yard for a short time.
Enough time for me to wonder
Where they all are going.
What they all are doing?
Why am i the only one
Sitting alone on a sleepy Saturday?

Wait a minute...
Books are just a medium,
Their environment is the marketplace.
They carry writing.

Wait a minute...
Writing is just a medium
It's environment is books.
It carries ideas.

Wait a minute...
Ideas are just a medium,
Their environment is writing,
They carry action.

Wait a minute...
Action is just a medium,
It's environment is ideas.
It carries change.

Wait a minute...
Change is just a medium,
It's environment is action.
It carries society.

Wait a minute...
Society is just a medium,
it's environment is change.
It carries us.

Wait a minute...

We still hold onto a Bible,
Though we no longer believe,
And we store scraps, carefully torn
From the newspaper to which we no longer subscribe.
Obituaries of relatives and friends
Who are no longer in our lives.

We keep the Bible in a bookshelf
Among other books we no longer read,
And we no longer need to remember
The lives we placed
Between those pages.