dcHILLworks

Is there any higher contentment

Than languishing in bed on Sunday morning?

We had that bit of Nirvana going for us

While morning yellow splashed the windowsill.

Then sounds of crunching feet

Come filtering through the fog of sleep

A pause and then the shock of door bell,

Far more disturbing than Monday’s alarm.

We compete in a dash to the kitchen door.

It frames our Pied Piper neighbor

In slightly irritating stance.

She holds the hand of our three year old.

“We had this visitor come to play this morning,

But really! I need a cup of coffee

And a little of the paper

Before I can get into that scene.”

Morning etiquette has changed,

No early excursions without permission.

Sundays, we still search for Nirvana

And later, for our neighbor’s smiling countenance.

@dc Hill wrote this on 8/5/1992

My older brother is close to me —

In looks, age and spirit.

A year-and-a-half separates us.

It’s enough, in early life,

For him to be

Rather dominant over me.

 

So our connections into maturity

Were often challenging.

The best of them, however,

Are sprinkled with sharing, love and caring.

My memory and my poetry

May revive them someday.

 

Just before our leap from adolescence

We had bodies, small and spare.

Hardly enough, said Mon Frere,

To contain the zest of life.

We both had the exuberance

To learn how it should be lived.

 

So one morning he devised

A secret recipe.

A sure-fire way

to fuel brawn and muscle.

It would compliment another body building plan,

Charles Atlas’ “Dynamic Tension”.

 

Dropped eggs on toast,

Cooked in milk!

Gently cracked and scalded.

Glazed yolks would stay whole

And those golden orbs shimmered

When he placed them on light umber toast.

 

My brother’s innovation?

He would christen the plate

With scalded milk remnants.

Not a calorie wasted, not a stitch.

All went to his sacred temple

To nourish and enrich.

 

The benediction act came

Was a salt and pepper blessing.

A long pause with subdued head,

(I imagined he read the future

Studying the peppered specks).

Then with earnest gusto, all disappeared.

 

Early on, my brother shared

His secret with me.

He grew a foot that year.

I caught on but had to take

For me an occasional

Double dose at morn and sup.

Plus another year-and-a-half to catch up.

 

We’re four or five times older now.

We have spent half of that time

In disconnection and separation.

I understand our bodies have stood up

To life’s exuberances and tests rather well.

But today, I wonder where our spirits are.

 

Guess it’s time

To tread my way to his mountains.

I’m hungry

And feel the need

To christen another plate

Of dropped eggs on toast.

– dc HILL June 21, 1992

Light messages sway

over brown leaves that cover

the forest floor.

Those flickering spots convey

yearnings of lusty leaves that hover.

they ask, “What’s in store?”

 

The probing question sparks an internal bound

within the dry compost

that had once shared the lofty height.

Predecessors tune to life’s music round.

their memories play host

to last Autumn’s withering blight.

 

A noble truth ferments with them

under kind Nature’s reign.

Earth and roots participation will carry it

To transformation.  Their greetings, timely sent,

allows today’s brightened leaves to reign.

they join heritage and eventide.

We grew up with the urge

to plant

and grow

and reap what we have sown.

 

Guided always by maternal words,

loving advice planted

to strive for the sky

yet set with limits of reality.

 

“You can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

“You could have done it better.”

“If it’s worth doing, do it well.”

“You’ll have to settle for that.”

“Where’s the Griffin in you.”

“What do you want? The sun with the moon around it?”

 

Now, you have arrived.

your home

a cornucopia

overflowing.

 

So Mon Frere,

what could I give you

that in life you don’t already have?

maybe the sun with the moon around it?

 

by dc HILL

© September 15, 1993