From A Poet's Desk.... Poem by Eric Cockrell

i have days filled with images,
smells, sounds, tastes...
images that talk without speaking,
that ache, that cut, that bleed...
small things, never noticed, or forgotten.

remember staring at sunlight dancing
in pine sap, alone in the woods, a small boy.
the way my bare feet felt in the creek,
the way my mother talked about god,
as if they were intimate friends.
the day my best friend's brother died,
we were about seven, i think he was five...
the freckles on the face of the girl i loved,
in the fifth grade...
and the day of mourning, alone in the woods,
when her family moved away.
the day President Kennedy was murdered...
the streets i walked at night as a teenager.
the questions, always the questions...
the call i took the night
my grandfather drowned.
the funeral when my brother died...

old frame houses, wood chopped, gardens tilled...
the way factories smelled, the stink of the jail cell.
passion, sweet passion, the body of my lover,
and music, always music....
classical, blues, rock, country, bluegrass, folk...
i loved them all!
dimlit bars, silent libraries, thumb stuck out
on endless highways... going, always going...
the feel of the wind at my back.

going up, and coming down,
shaking the monkey off my back.
and one by one those i loved died...
leaves fallen from the tree...
sleeping in empty churches,
or deep south drunk tanks....
the days each of my children were born,
and each time i lost it all...
a thousand prayers, a thousand doubts,
and moments of pure faith....
black and white, and all the colors
of living in tiny slivers....
i thank each and every memory
with eternal gratitude...
images of a life lived,
that throb and haunt the night!