A Family Poem by Robert Combs

the stairway of my life
has no gilded edge
rather tacks
and splinters
and boards torn up
and places with no carpet on the steps
with skinned knuckles
on bare feet
all the time
I've kept climbing
and reaching landings
and turning corners
slow going in the shadows
and where there has been no light
I keep blindly searching
failing and
getting up to start again
building my own loose menagerie
that might pass for a family on Sunday
if we don’t sit too far apart
and how I have envied lives
like yours who sustain that family stone
I'm nowhere to draw that strength
or support this poverty
of a life so left alone and though
your family that seems so scattered
still there’s a melody
links your parts
and I can see the song is written
on the rock that is your Mother
as she has hold your hearts