Rick Leddy

Elegy

My fingers stroke his forehead

Warmth leeching from him

Feeling his life inch away a frozen moment at a time

Artificial comfort flowing through his veins

Words quiet in his ear

Find peace

Time to leave this place

for the undiscovered country

Wishing for more time

Hoping for one last word

The man of a thousand baseballs

Thrown back and forth

My coach, my father

Young, smiling, waving 

The years suddenly blurred and lost

in an instant 

Dropping wet and receding

Evaporating like the essence of him

Invisible and inevitable

The man of a million projects and quips 

Becoming a memory before my eyes

The quiet of the room 

Loud with love and pain

His breathing soft and slow

Then gone

Just like that

Death stealing him with a whisper

The music of his life finished

Without a sigh

I love you, Dad

His hands gnarled and cold in mine

My lips brush against his cheek

Young and running free

Again in my mind

Forever

Little Brother

I hated you 

All the ladies in cotton skirts

And dawning 60s smells

Loving you

Brand-new, just off the shelf

Cooing and touching you in your crib

Ignoring me already washed-up and yesterday's news

At three years old

Them asking me what

It felt like to have a little brother

Saying nothing,

because I despised the little usurper

who had dropped in to claim 

a piece of my kingdom

and the affection of my subjects

But I learned to tolerate you

Eventually 

Rival becoming playmate 

And friend

I was not the brother you deserved

All of the time

The easy and convenient object of my frustration

And you wear those childhood slights still firmly on your being 

like an angry coat made of fights and epithets 

I know apologies don't wipe away 

anything except the guilt and regret of the sender

And do little else

The decades precede us

The little children we were faded

black and white newsreel memories

But hate can grow to love

I know

Because I hated you

And love you now

And cannot imagine

The world without you

By my side

The Path

The path winding and straight

some filled with brambles and spikes 

leaving bleeding regrets

and scars of forgotten souls and deeds

walking without a map 

and learning to love the lost

Beginning smooth and empty 

crying to the heavens then rushing 

awkward steps to new beginnings

Now more path behind than ahead

staring back in wonderment

Remembering the dawns and the endings

The bright air of youth full in deep lungs

electrified thoughts and writhing beauty

Our new strong legs running ahead

feeling the strong wind laugh against our open watering eyes

Finding lust then unearthing love

Creating the colors and the first cries of new life

we then set upon a new and different path

Looking to the nearer horizon

Blinded by the exquisite questions 

frightened and exhilarated

knowing that the road ends

and not knowing when or where

But grateful to have traveled it

if even for an all but too brief time

Embracing the pain and the ecstasy

Listening to the universe whisper from above and under

move ahead until rest seeks you

But loving each mote of dust and each kicked rock

each detour and crystal clear heading 

A billion pinpoints of starlight and peals of laughter leading the way

Each of us taking different roads and stories

to come to the same place

Beginning and ending

all of us

But what a magnificent journey

Rain

It's dark inside

And he is 12

The juke box weeps adult sadness  

he doesn't understand,

but is learning too soon

His father shadowed rage on a barstool

A phantom he must conjure home

Gathering storm clouds with each gulp

Ready to rain anger and cruelty 

On the world he wants to drink away

He sits culled and voluntarily dispossessed

Cheating on his family and himself

For a seductress in a glass

Go get your father

His mother had said

He won't listen to me

As he watched another piece of his childhood chipped away,

lying inert and dead at his leaden feet

He stands at the bar's entrance

Weighing 

which will be worse

Leaving the demon alone to grow

Or inviting it in 

A Russian Roulette choice

with six bullets in the chamber

Machine gun heartbeat pounds his ears

As he moves toward the stranger he knows by name

Wishing the desperate caliginous shadows

will swallow him whole

The jukebox a jet engine roar

Screaming the story of his life 

As he taps the shoulder of the storm

And waits for the rain to fall