Writing About Family.com: August 2022

Still There?

When you were a baby,
When you cried and no one came,
When you cried and no one held you,
Or when someone finally came
But there was no comforting . . .

Now that you’re older
Do you hunger for affection?
Is the baby still there?
Still crying?
Can you ever let that baby go?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Would You

With mortality on my aging mind

I lately wonder, dear one,

Which of us will be the first to go?

I wonder what should I do

If it’s you?

So much depends on the time and place

You leave the race

For the great beyond.

If I awake early some overcast morning

And stagger halfway to the kitchen

In desperate need of caffeine,

Then stop and return to our bedroom

For forgotten slippers,

Finding you breathless and cold,

Should I call 9-1-1 right away

In my sleepy state,

Or would it be wrong to have a cup of coffee,

Or two?

Would you object?

Would you?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Just One

Married so long,

No longer two.

Just one.

Still room for differentiation,

For contradiction,

For physical distinction,

(Of course.)

But observations,

Conclusions,

Products of two ingredients

In a single recipe.

The previously single being

Asserts on occasion,

Contends,

Yet soon retreats from soliloquy,

Unused to being alone.

Yes, that fearsome word,

Alone,

Ever threatening old lovers

Who will not live forever,

Who will lose the echo of the soul,

Married so long,

No longer two.

When My Children Are In Bed

The Wandering Time

This time of loss,
This wandering in the desert,
This desolation.

My father never told me,
Never warned me,
Never prepared me.

Perhaps he thought this time of loss
Was a private, personal weakness.

I saw him,
Bent by the weight of it,
Barely knowing
Yet suffering,
Keeping busy,
Distracted,
Not realizing,
Not acknowledging this other rite of passage,
Coming so late in life,
This time of loss,
This wandering in the desert,
This desolation.

My father’s ghost is with me now
In this, my wandering time.
I cannot tell if he knows the way.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved