Songwriter’s Lament

The least of me is always on the outside.

My dull side always faces to the sun.

The finest thoughts are hidden in the shadow,

the tenderest moments somehow never sung.

Try as I may to face and force the issue

and show the world the contours of my mind,

the subtleties are faded in translation.

The meanings are misplaced by word and rhyme.

Maybe in our unheard conversations

we’ve found the answer we sought all along.

The price to pay for being fully human

is that we’ll never write the perfect song.

I guess it shows.

© George Phillips, 1973

Famous American Songs
by Gustav Koppé
in Cornell University Library
from Wikimedia Commons

A Christmas Poem

Take me, take me, home,

Wherever home may be,

Oh, take me.

Or toss me, toss me,

in the deep blue sea.

Just toss me.

Could I stand upon a mountain?

Could I look for the end of the sky?

Could I find the safest place

that could ever be?

I've been upon a mountain.

I've looked for the end of the sky.

I've seen that one safest place,

hold no poetry.

Let me, let me, tug

the string between you and me.

Yes, tug too,

so we know, we know,

the connection;

I am you as you are me.  

© Dennis Wright, 2020

A Christmas themed painting depicting
Peanuts character Snoopy and Woodstock on a window.
Photo by Noah Wulf
from Wikimedia Commons

               Book cover photo from Wikimedia Commons

The Empty Page

This time of year perhaps the empty page

Should be black instead of white

Bleak and wet and heavy with hibernation

Lie weighty and soggy on the silent desk

Waiting for some harbinger some hope

To leaven the wintry landscape within

Perhaps the page were better made of ice

That I may strap on the old hockey skates

Once more and finding that perfect stretch

Of cold weather without snow strike off

Across the perfect surface taking flight

Without a single word to shatter the ecstasy

© Bill Prindle, 2017