John Tansey

For you, the hapless peruser,
who happens to thumb upon this page,
along a dusty shelf of books.
Was not haphazard at all;
...

My mother,
I have not seen her in years;
...

ACT I

It was not your presence,
rather its absence
...

At end, when it is too late
to start anew.
...

My mind goes from mood to mood,
With no chronology nor sequence of events;

The effect of one thing falling into
...

Upon a roof,
A potential leaper,
Held by the hand of his savior
In a fingerlock hold on humanity.
...

A Whittle of Words...
Sitting, slumped in a chair,
On a wooden porch
And under the sun
...

With hand unsteady,
I stop
at the first line’s edge of a jagged poem,
looking down
...

One has lived long enough
when the world ends,
the universe collapses
and time, itself, reverses...
...

Reminiscing on Childhood…

I
...

Is a boy with a kite,
Who, catching the wind
like a winged gull,
...

Like a wild Stallion
that wont be saddled, spitting the bit,
I bucked and threw every rider
galloping toward the infinite open....
...

“Empty Nest”


With the boy’s room, draped in white sheets
...

Even when I was young,
societies rising sun,
...

Brisk, this cold October wind,
pruning husks of brown-balled leaves
into effigies of Autumn's wane,
sweeps with besom broom
...

It was not your presence,
rather its absence
...

I lived beneath my children,
For a brief but harried time.

Yet, I knew solace that winter,
...

Engaged,
plotting marriage,
I nodded,
while looking through you
...

Everywhere I go,
I am surrounded by ghosts.

They are very lonely, like me,
...

My love has no edges

it is like a great ripe fruit,
...