On This Planet

I am no scholar,
I have no great learning to pass on.
My job is small,
My contribution
To the advance of civilization,
Slight.
Yet I sit each morning
Sipping hot coffee with newspaper in hand
And pass stern judgment on my country,
Contemplating its sure, swift decline.

I shall soon be transported
Like a moth in a velvet cocoon
Across the freeways
To my place of employment
Where such insignificant labors
Nevertheless earn me food, shelter
And many possessions,
Such as the big-screen television
I will watch long into the night
While the less remarkable planets
Whirl by noiselessly in the dark.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Thankful

There is no greater gift than the gift of a new day, 

and the health, sanity and freedom to make use of it.

~ Words and photograph by Russ Allison Loar

© All Rights Reserved

The Years Go By

When you are ten
A year is monumental,
Sometimes devastating,
Certainly life-altering,
Consciousness-shifting,
One-tenth of your severed-umbilical existence.

But oh how we discard the years
As we grow older,
A wasted year here,
A lost year there.

Some of us lose whole decades,
Smothered by bad luck,
Ill health,
Misguided ambitions,
Weakness,
Until in old age we look back
At the children we once were,
That long summer day
When we were truly happy
And wished for nothing.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Imagine

I imagine she is reading these words.
I imagine she loves me still.
I imagine she really did love me,
And so I forgive all mistakes,
For I too made so many.
I imagine she wants to be forgiven.

I imagine she has forgiven me.
I imagine she remembers the best part of me,
The best part of us.
I imagine she is learning to let small things
And hard feelings
Go.

I imagine I really did love her.
I imagine I love her still.

I imagined her then,
I imagine her now.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved