It Is You


O fond remembrance,
Goes here,
With wistful images of childhood,
The lingering sun of spring,
Or perhaps a warm winter fire,
A blackberry bush,
A dog,
Your mother,
Brother,
Other.

Yes, you saw but did not know.
Now you know and see
Through melancholy tint,
In veiled memory.
All your days have come to this,
This enshrined vision of a time,
A day,
Or perhaps a moment,
Goes here,
Your illuminated moment.

O long unrealized realization,
Goes here.
The simple joy,
The profound regret,
Or perhaps both,
And yet,
Something remains,
Something mysterious,
Unspoken yet large,
The lump in the throat,
The wistful tear,
Goes here.

It is you
Who makes this poem,
All the poems you hold near,
It is you.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

It Grows


The silent majesty of a tree
Is at every moment a miracle
Unveiled before the world.
Without proclamation,
Without advertisement,
Without faith or despair,
It grows.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

This Acorn


Of all my possessions,
This acorn,
Now tawny and hard,
A tree-fallen treasure
With its tiny triangle-thatched cap intact,
Its precise patina so perfectly patterned,
One of so many millions,
This acorn,
Of all my possessions,
Here in my hand.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Our Stories ~ They Will Not Burn


We lost everything in the fire,
Every thing,
All our mementoes,
Our objects,
Each one containing a memory.

So now,
In a dingy room in a dingy motel,
We put the pieces of our lives back together.
We don’t need objects to prompt our memories.
All our memories are ready to be awakened.

And so,
We sit in the dark,
Telling stories,
So many stories.
We could spend the rest of our lives
Telling our stories.

We've already begun.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Life Went On


It was Sunday,
And many millions
Living in the most powerful nation on Earth
Spent most of the day
Watching the big football game on television,
Cheering,
Moaning,
Screaming at the electronic moving pictures of football players
Running back and forth and sideways,
Trying desperately,
Valiantly,
To get hold of the football
And take it to one end,
Or the other,
Of the green plastic space
Some still call a field.

The next day,
Life went on,
Much as it had before.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved