03/07/2025
MARATHON MAN
He once said to me,
His son,
“You’re like a son to me”
Which still makes me giggle,
Despite the disease.
I talked to you tonight
And you gave me this to write,
One of the first
Paintings of yours
Hangs proudly
In my lounge.
A piwakawaka
Connecting our worlds
That joyfully flits
Around one’s head,
Like my thoughts,
Your thoughts,
A pinball machine.
You gave me your Roads,
The painting and more.
You gave me your spirit.
A wandering artist,
Inside of us both.
Wandering not outward
But spiritually inward.
There were others that claimed it
But you and I proclaimed it.
A white path leading home.
You were Lancelot for sure.
Galahad, I hope to be.
I’d love to be a knight
In your light in the dark.
A story you told me
That taught me the man
You taught me to be.
I was left speechless
Because no man I’d known,
Up to that point,
Would have been the same way.
You got on the stage
Doing what you loved most.
Using your art to teach us
How to live a good life
Like yours.
Which we all
Secretly liked
Because happy around you
And happy within you
Made happy in me.
No need was there ever to force it
As a dog with a bone might have done,
Ferociously.
It’s so late at night,
That it’s early in the morning,
But I can not stop
These Last Writes.
Peter Pan syndrome...
Maybe you had it?
Yet only ignorance would label
An innocence not lost.
Of one who knows the power
Of the light right inside.
A marathon of words
This is starting to be.
An infinite list
For an infinite heart.
An innocent mind
And a true man’s patience.
That’s the main difference
Between those last three,
Change the last one
And a child he’d be.
But patience he had
And has still
As he waits
For this poem, of sorts,
To end.
Your love,
For which I’m eternally grateful,
Has filled that bottomless
Pit in my chest.
Your death, though sad,
Has removed all the need
That should never have been,
And will be no more.
There’s more I could say
But here it must end –
In written word only
As it could nor will never end
Because you will constantly
Be running circles
Around my heart.
But Dad,
Your love in form
Of the paintings you made
And the laughs that you gave,
Will live in my life,
Within and without,
In Dad-form forever.
