For Thursday September 22 2022 My Father's Eyes & Getting Somewhere Jill

[jill stockinger]

My Father’s Eyes         by Jill Stockinger

 

My father’s eyes were fixed

firmly on the future.

When he was was forced

to face reality, it never failed

to disappoint him.

He lived his life among the stars

and bequeathed them to me.

 

I slide down rainbows, dance

with the flowing northern lights,

and fly with eagles, wild and free;

at night, the clouds rock me into sleep.

I never look back and never look down.

I am my father’s child--

I have my father’s eyes.

 

 

Getting Somewhere             by Jill Stockinger

 

The past contains a well-built lighthouse

with a beacon streaming “Warning! Warning!”

but we operate in such cloudiness and murk,

we keep crashing on the rocks.

The rocks are well-marked on the map,

but somehow we've lost it through our

indifferent, perhaps even slovenly, habits

of housekeeping, or spilled our morning

coffee on the words and we hung the map

up to dry, then forgot about it in our

exhilarating journey, movement being

prized, until it is too late. Our vessel hits

the shoals and breaks apart on those

pointed ever-present rocks. We thought

we were heading somewhere important,

and we thought we were getting there fast.

 

 

 

 

  

[patti santucci]

Jill,

My Father's Eyes is fabulous. I have nothing to add. What a loving tribute.

Getting Somewhere is equally beautiful. I love the coffee spilled on words,  hung up to dry and forgotten. I love that we know we should learn from the past but end up crashing into rocks anyway. When I read the ending and the line "...we thought we were getting there fast", in my mind I added "turns out we were". This may not say what you want to say, (especially because the line above speaks of heading somewhere important) but, as I age, I am reminded that we are getting there fast, if there is death - how we rush through life, crashing clumsily, falling apart, rebuilding ourselves, starting over, crawling our from under - doing it all to move forward, heading toward something important. Then, upon reflection, we see that where we are heading is coming up fast indeed.

Just my thoughts,

Patti

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