Eternallly

Eternally

© April 17, 2010

Richard O Harris

Today has been a day for me filled with long reflection
On our times together of sweet and shared affection
But the time has been so long since last I heard your voice
I wonder if I will ever again experience such a choice.

I am sad about so many things that have happened
And I know I cannot find a way for them to mend
Still, I hope against all hope that before I die
I will hear your voice and look into your eyes.

You are still the greatest joy and love I have ever known
Though I knew it would end, I could not have grown
Without your love, your gentle voice, your touch and anger too
There could not be a man like me unless he had know you.

So, my friend, my partner, the only love of my entire life
Thanks for sharing what you could and bearing part of my strife
We said goodbye so many times yet knew we would soon say hello
This last goodbye is hard for me, you see I am not good at letting go.

I love you always and all ways, you are wanted, needed, and desired
But your world has no place for me or allowed you to become mired
It has been many years for us both but I can only speak for me
There is no one I will love more and you I now know I will love eternally.

Battles Within and Battles Without

© August 14, 2009

Richard O. Harris

Battles Within and Battles Without over things causing us fear.
Fear of loss, of being alone, or some fear we may not know.
These battles also rage alongside the needs we hold so dear.
Needs of food, of shelter too, or a love that may never grow.

Yet we continue each day in a somewhat normal pattern
We’re going here and there, or there to finish a preplanned course.
So the battles will not overtake us and we do not learn
What exactly is it we do fear and where is this fear’s source.

Battles Within, Battles Without will sometimes cause someone to do
Many things that person might not wish done to him or her.
I know this because, like you, I fight these battles daily too.
After all these years, when I fear instead I will show anger.

What’s the answer? I do not know. That’s why I am writing this.
Each of us must do our best on our own daily battleground.
I can only share with you, my battles are less hit than miss.
One thing, for me, I know for sure the battles go round and round.

To Live

© July 28, 2009

Richard O Harris

TO LIVE are the two words I claim as my personal credo
To Know as much as I can and knowing learn to grow

To be a better person than the one I was the day before
To feel I have done my best each day and just a little more.

All these abound every moment whether I breath in or out
For with every breath I take there is something to be about

Thoughts about this or actions on that does not seem to matter
As long as to live each day my best is the main thing I am after.

Regardless of what anyone believes will happen after death
All I have for now, is for me to live with every breath

I will do all I can each day to face and defeat my own demons
TO LIVE in such a way that life, for me at least, has some meaning.

I, TOO 1990

I, TOO
1990
Richard O Harris

I, too, have witnessed the death of those who loved me as only a family could after my own family cast me away.

I, too, have seen the quick, seemingly peaceful death suicide has brought to some as well as the agonizing, tortuous laboring for the last breath of those who even then cling to the hope that “this is not really happening to me”.

I, too, have grieved over many young friends my own age and felt the guilty joy of one who has been spared—so far.

I, too, will grieve as each one passes and my life and my world lose their sources of companionship, talent, love, and dinner parties one by one.

I, too, will be forever “scarred” by what has become the holocaust of my day with all of its ramification –past, present, and to come.

Yet, I, too, will continue to live, love, and hope while I have breath left to breathe and life left to live.

I, too, will strive for happiness even as each of them die never to be replaced—only forgotten as those who remember them fade from history.

I, too, will work to make my life and my world a better place even as we lose our most valuable assets when these dying are no more.

I, too, will embrace life as I have learned from those who died that this is the place I belong and the purpose I serve—for now.

I, too, will cherish the love we shared and feel gratitude that I have come to know what the words love and life signify in all their shades of meaning.

Will you, too, bury your dead and join me with your memories of joy as well as pain so
we might ease the loneliness and increase the happiness each of us is able to feel?