Poem Number Six in a Year of Poems

Uncle Mine

My Uncle is mans man

Not my uncle by blood

But more than that me

More than that to me. 

99 now and maybe a hundred soon

He's a betting man on the horses

Born 2/11/16 betting on making a hundred shooting high

Till the Belmont Gates clank open

He'll be in the running. 

He's stood by ailing wife 

As she sank into memoirs hole

Memories burdens laid at our feet

To comfort and adore. 

So off on his journey

With lung cancer to bear

not seen in too long

We all have our own burdens to bear

Nothing of compare

He's part of who I've become

Made by how he has lived and loved

Cared for and by

He is the one

Who's stood by

While others stared

And talked

Faithfulness flowered and grew

Worked and labored

Under love but not lost

My uncle is a mans man

But more than that to me

More than that to me. 

Running his last race

Shedding illusions

Spilling them

Leaves in the sun

A man .… so loved. 

Some Poem in a Year of Sailing

I've long felt the need

For the wind on my face 

Beating to weather

Wind whipped wave and fate

Give me a boat

And a sail to drive her

I'll show you happiness and challenge

A microcosm of life 

Upon a floating point calculation

In an ocean of lakes of liquid

I'd rather be thoughtless

Upon sailing a far reach

Following seas may roughen my passage

But it's where I'd rather be

Time out of mind

It's the sailing life for me my love

Too long left behind

It beckons sirens arrow

Straight to my heart and soul

How much longer must I suffer

These slings and arrows

Before listening to the beating of my heart?

To give in to what feels inevitable

To feel the unleashed power of wind and wave

The lines thrumming in my hand

Vibrating with expectancy and hope …

How long…

Poem Number Five in a Year : Cleanup

Cleanup

I guess, I am thinking, that it is time for more
for more of a continuing goodbye
for I am trying to conclude and rid myself
of the detritus of yes, you guessed it . . .
paper and files and staples and old rubber bands
crackly with age and dissolution.

So I run into and run over the memories of you,
lingering traces of your life and others and mine
inextricably wound up in, muddled and woven
a midst each others.

What shall I keep and disregard?
what paper should I shred, read, not read and scan
scan into its particulate digits and electronic emphemera of
scattered bytes of ones and zeros that make up memories and lives?

so this is not goodbye but a way of remembering
that between the tears and melancholia there remains happiness
that I loved you, you loved me
and that this idea cannot be vanquished

even as the years dilute the things we collect
and they become other people's memories
dear to their hearts and so on and so forth.

I still miss you though.
I still love you.
It is nice to see you again
but I miss your voice
I miss your voice.
I miss your voice.


     David McCullough
     July 11, 2015

Poem Number Four in a Year

Knew this would happen
that I would be late
then I thought I just don't care
any
more
then I have to.

Because there are not Poem Policeman
except in my heart that judge so harshly
so it is a day late
so it is
so it is a day early

quantum chance just spins and spins
in the end and beginning
it is all the same
quarks wink in and out
singing of missing muons

You are late and early in reading this
Poem Number Four in a Year
written on day somewhere between
the beginning and the end
the fourth and fifth day

it is written
that is enough
to make me smile
and shiver.

     David McCullough
     July 11, 2015

Poem Number Three in a Year (Productivity Points)

Productivity Points

I'm sick of productivity points 

The endless bean counting bastards

Assigned me to hell .…

To take sacred care of dying patients

Expecting me to ask…

how can I love?

How can I serve?  

When the only question corporate gods ask is …

Why are your points so low?

Why aren't you seeing more patients?

Go faster, be better, be more efficient. 

This ain't bout love brother 

this ain't about serving sister

It's about bottom line profits in a supposed nonprofit world. 

I want to love and serve

Not be driven by corporate Machiavellian bean counters 

When their family lies dying in my arms should I rush to judgement and say to them that I have no time?

That my points are lacking?

That my corporate overlords are monitoring my implanted chip and movements across the cratered landscape of insurance ruled medicine?

My heart bleeds for their malfeasance and lack of compassion and cold hearted  practicality. I accuse them 

of NOT serving

of NOT knowing how to love

I'll weep for what we have lost and rage against the dying and loss. 

     David McCullough

     July 9, 2015

Poem Number Two in a Year

I wrote a letter to my daughter late last night. 

Late at night my thoughts turned to her and to daughter or son never had. 

Hours spent writing of the love we share

Of hopes and dreams

I want the best for her and whatever that means

But knowing nothing is not much

Or it is every thing. 

We get caught up in the knowing

Sometimes it's too much and leads us to ignorance of another's path. 

But knowledge is power

Freedom from oppressions chains

And I'll preach the power of that till the State executes me for the power of those words.  

All this I tried to say in love so she may listen. 

Knowing in the end that these words on paper or not may echo down the years to the woman she will become. 

Don't live in ignorance. 

Do not ignore history and think you are not OF it. All this. 

All this. 

All this and much more

Of the love we share. 

     David McCullough

     July 8, 2015

Poem Number One in a Year

I have been thinking now
for a year or more that I
must write more poetry
or something creative for god's sake
if not my own
lest I go crazy with noncreativity
sadness
and pain.

my bright idea of writing a poem
once a day
one a day
for a year.

Ah yes I can hear my wife now
muttering in the rafters of her mind
'he will not do this thing, he will just talk of it'
and then my sweet,
my own doubting begins.

Except for tonight
no doubts escape
smashing them flat as they scuttle . . .
and I write.

      David McCullough
      July 7, 2015