Walking Lake Erie at Cedar Point

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake.

We did it on a bet.

What kind of stupidity did it take?

What could have resulted in heartache

is the nightmare I dream of yet.

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake.

Even now the memory makes me shake

with a terror I can't forget.

What kind of stupidity did it take?

Too late we realized the folly of our mistake,

the enormity of life's threat.

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake

And treading gingerly now to not tempt fate,

we wondered with minds fraught with regret,

what kind of stupidity did it take?

So at last for reason's sake

we turned back to where ice and shore met.

Young and foolish, we walked the frozen lake.

What kind of stupidity did it take?

Growth - Lillian: In Memory

Assignment: Write poem – about a situation, or a person – that can be made into a metaphor.

It sprouted new branches every day,

Polluting once healthy soil with roots of decay.
Its tentacles, spindly fingers of malicious reign,
Pursuing their deadly deed,
Reached out and choked with lightening speed
The functions of her once fertile brain.

Acceptance

I used to see him seated there

In his bedroom chair at prayer.

Daddy, shouldn't you kneel?

But he would shake his head.

The Lord knows I work hard the livelong day.

He doesn't mind that I rest when I pray.

Now in eerie, greenish light 

I see him again.

Daddy, you're back!

His smile is sad 

His face is gray.

Yes, I'm back, but I'm very weary.

I don't belong here anymore.

I cannot stay.

Then, aware, I awake,

And despite my pain,

I know that now it's time

To get on with my life again.

Daddy Comes Back

Poetry Assignment:  Remember a dream and describe a series of images from the dream 

The following dream came to me at least thirty-some years ago, but it is still vivid in my memory:

There is a greenish light emanating from my parents' bedroom.  I am in the hallway at the top of the steps leading up to their second floor.  

I peer into the bedroom, and see my dear father seated in the easy chair in their bedroom – the chair he used to sit in to say his night prayers.  (“The Lord knows I work hard and am tired at the end of the day,” he once explained to me when as a child I had asked him why he didn't kneel to say his prayers. “The Lord is just glad to hear from me,” he had said.  “He doesn't mind that I rest my weary bones while I talk to Him.”)

My father had been dead for several months at the time I had this dream, and in the dream, upon seeing him in his chair, I feel a lifting of the great weight that had been in my chest.  “Daddy, you're back!”  I say, and run into the room toward him.  

I see that his coloring is very gray.  He smiles at me, but it is a sad smile.  The weight in my chest comes back.

“Yes, I'm back,” he says, “but it's a mistake.  I am very, very tired!  I don't belong here anymore.”

Without any further word between us, I know he has to go back.