The Finger Speaks
I don’t ask the question,
Are you happy?
It seems too intrusive,
Too personal for most of my friends.
It’s a question reserved for my lover,
Used sparingly.
But of course I can tell,
Even in the emails of distant friends.
Joy infuses their words,
Oozes out from even the briefest missives,
Such as this morning’s message from my old friend,
An entranced grandfather,
Too encumbered to reply with more than a short explanation,
No doubt typed with a single finger:
“Baby on lap!”
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Few Things As Hard
When my little boy turned cold
And hard,
I knew the world had him
By the throat,
That it would take a long
Long time
For him to shake it loose,
If he ever could,
If he ever can.
There are few things as hard
As becoming a man.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Fathers And Daughters
O sweet child,
Father wants you to be happy
And will buy you many pretty things
And dust your life with confectioners’ sugar
And keep the world away
For at least another day.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Exiles
Leaving the office late last night
I passed by harshly lit co-worker cubicles,
All the carefully framed photos of smiling children,
Of loved ones,
Precisely placed,
Reassurance during the long working day,
A bond of love in our lives.
We are exiles,
Returning home for a few exhausted hours
To again be husbands and wives,
Parents and children,
Families.
Together again
For those precious few hours
That work allows.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Evolution
Feeling the hot breath of the baboon
On the back of the neck,
We overindulged in the refuge of civilization,
Denied being animal at all,
As if inseminated, incubated and initiated
In a place somehow apart from this Earth.
Now we live in a disillusioned age,
Tired of manners, morals and inhibitions,
Tired of orderly existence
In ghettos of steel, cement, glass and plastic.
The restless stirrings of things within us
That have no mind
Scare us no longer.
They lead us,
And our children hunger for raw meat,
Animal again.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Building
When my great-grandfather was young,
Growing up in a small farming town,
He was needed.
His labor was needed.
Every able-bodied citizen was needed,
And by their labors, the towns grew into cities,
And the cities became a country.
Each morning they were called,
Called to a hundred,
A thousand different employments.
Each morning I am not called.
My labor is not needed.
I imagine my great-grandfather
Choosing an occupation,
Answering the call,
Fulfilling a need,
Building a life,
A city,
A country.
He would not understand this aimless life I lead.
He would not know me.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Devolution
He was bored,
So bored with routine,
Every morning,
Brushing his teeth,
Making coffee,
Slogging off to work,
To predictable employments.
Then,
Weekend chores,
Social obligations,
So encumbered by family, friends and finance.
The half-slumbering supplicant,
Longing for escape,
His earnest entreaties
Finally heard,
Heard and granted.
Now,
As the first light warms the earth
He drags himself out from under a stone,
Eager to feel the sun against his scales,
The taste of yesterday’s grasshopper
Still lingering on the tongue.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Dear Children
Dear children,
We encourage you to try
What we never tried,
But we must caution you
About what we have done.
That is,
We would warn you about trying
What we tried in vain.
You see,
Dear children,
We want you to succeed where we failed,
But we also want you to avoid our mistakes
And be safe,
Though as the years wander by
We must confess some regret
About being a little too safe.
We want you to be successful,
But do remember what seems like success
May turn out to be failure in disguise.
So,
Go boldly ahead,
We advise,
But do be careful.
You will regret never having taken a chance,
But if you risk everything
You may be throwing your lives away.
In other words,
This is the real world
And there is absolutely nothing
Your parents can do
About it.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Something Like Love
Young women in love
Tease, taunt and tempt.
Young men in lust
Pledge, promise and plead.
But after the prize is won,
After the prize is won,
Familiarity dulls and tarnishes
As the spring of youth passes,
As the winter of aging advances.
Then one day,
That silly young girl is gone.
That amorous young boy is gone.
And the middle-aged couple they’ve become
Silently mourn.
No more spark,
No more passion,
Just the valiant quest,
To keep something like love alive.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Certain Freedom
I am no one in particular,
Nobody special,
Never promoted,
Lucky to have a job actually,
To earn a living.
My wife is tired of me.
My children are preoccupied.
Life does not expect too much from me,
Which allows a certain freedom.
I get up early each morning,
Alone in the dark,
Make a cup of coffee
And sit in my favorite chair
Watching the world get light.
I hear soft voices
And I am filled with joy.
How very good it is to be alive.
How very, very good it is,
Indeed.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
After She Died
She saved almost everything:
Letters and greeting cards,
Junk mail,
Old photos in forgotten boxes,
Tattered piano music with penciled notations,
Business cards,
Decades of buttons,
Shirt stays from her father’s collars,
Powder puffs,
Spoiled perfumes,
Broken jewelry,
Stopped clocks,
Obligatory souvenirs from trips abroad,
Her husband’s defunct electric shavers,
Rusty tools,
Curious parts for obsolete appliances,
(more).
Sorting through drawers, cupboards and closets,
What seemed to me an irrational hoarding
Was fraught with meaning for her,
Each object imbued with purpose,
Each object a crystallized memory,
Each object a desperate wish:
Remember me,
Remember me.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
I Go With Them
In the early light he asks me
For protection from the world.
He prays for his family,
For his innocence,
For his tortured soul.
He moves closer to me.
He calls me father
But holds no clear image of what I am.
He wants to be a saint,
An artist,
A wealthy man.
His little boy shouts
Daddy, it’s today!
And they are gone,
Plunging into a freshly painted world of play.
I go with them.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
In Our Older Years
If we’re lucky,
Nothing much will happen today,
At least not to us,
Though we may mistake safety for boredom.
If we’re lucky,
No one will call us on the phone
Or send us mail today,
Though we may mistake solitude for loneliness.
If we’re lucky,
Early some morning one of us will awaken
And find the other has died peacefully while sleeping,
Though we may mistake inevitability for tragedy.
If we’re lucky,
The other will quietly follow.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Adoptee
All these photographs,
All these people
Suddenly of some relation to me,
The lost bastard child who found his way back.
Back to half sisters and brothers,
Living and dead,
Half nieces and nephews,
Living and dead,
A parent or two
And all assorted associations,
All these lives lived without my knowing,
Died without my knowing,
All these lives,
Without knowing.
I was the lost bastard child,
Born by accident,
Anonymous,
Hidden,
Yet despite the best efforts
Of those who thought they knew best,
Welcome or not,
I found my way back.
Knowing,
That was always the necessary thing,
Just knowing.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
My House
It was barely sprinkling
After several hours of light rain
Early Sunday morning
When I heard the coughing,
The retching,
And looked out my breakfast nook window
To see a young man with his car door open,
Vomiting on the street in front of my house.
My house.
How lucky I am
That I can say the words:
My house,
While aimless young men
Wander through this city,
Regurgitating at will.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
All The King's Horses
Where are those children
Who wanted to play?
Where are their toys,
Have they put them away?
Where is my son,
Has he grown up and gone?
My little daughter,
A child of her own?
All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Cannot put childhood
Together again.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
At Play
You call it freedom,
Those afternoons on your dappled horse,
Kicking up dust sparkling in wet ocean air,
Cantering round and round solitary paths
Worn around your father’s estate
Where an old Mexican woman with scars on her knees
Scrubs heel marks off the Spanish tile.
Your orange and white tomcat snags a butterfly,
Yanks off a fluorescent wing
With his needle-nose teeth.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Bedtime
Josh who is growing older says,
“Good night Dad,”
And I say,
“Hittin’ the hay?”
And Josh who is growing older says,
“Guess so,”
And I say,
“Sweet dreams buddy,”
And Josh who is growing older says,
“See you in the morning,”
And I say,
“Not if I see you first!”
And Josh who is already quite the young man indeed says,
“Yeah, right dad.”
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Called
Fair youth’s enthusiasms
Echo distant in this quiet garden
Where I try to envision
Such thoughts as now drive my son
Out into the world,
Away from home.
I would spare him error and injury,
But cannot
Without hiding him away.
I would see through his eyes
That I could better understand,
But who can live another’s life?
That which I know is of my own universe,
And while there is much that is universal to all,
My young man now walks upon his own feet,
Called forth by his own soul,
And by the fatherless world.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
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