A Chiseled Face

Something in the face —
The way the eyes are always eager
Or how the corners of the mouth have turned up
Or the round cheeks with the set grin.
Something…
Something there reveals…

Happiness.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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So the Stoics Say

Life is full of pain and woe,
So the Stoics say,
But the trick is easy to see —
Don’t let it get to thee.

You decide what’s fair or foul.
It’s a judgment that you make.
It’s not the world that’s out of whack.
It’s your judgment, it’s very slack.

Select your judgments carefully
And you will no doubt be
A person who disarms harm —
Turns it to a funny yarn.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Don’t Settle for Less

Find your joy.
Don’t be afraid to deploy.
Search high and low
Until you feel the glow.

It may conceal itself in the attic
That makes you its willing addict.
It may reside in the cellar
That proves itself most stellar.

Don’t give up too soon —
It may hide in your room.
Don’t settle for less
That you may be blessed.

Find Your Vision

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Welcome Mr. Death

Now the leaves, relentless, fast decay,
And memory grows dimmer day by day.
Old age seeps into joints and sinews furtively.
Shedding white hair grows tousled unbecomingly.

All your dreams long since past…
Purpose seems a bloated outcast.
Hope and aspirations retarded;
Fleeting time, spent, never recovered.

The young fear Mr. Death —
Not to be cheated of their experience,
But the old have had their time,
So, for them, he may be kind.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Goodbye

Death, the unknowable,
Hangs over one’s aged head
Like the sword of Damocles.

Will one depart with just a whisper
Into the endless night…
Forsake all sight and sound,
All touch and taste,
With the last breath?

No second chances in the dark embrace.
No redemption in silent time.
Not even adrift.
Nowhere.
Nothing.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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A Twinkle in His Eye

Springtime.

A solitary old man sits on a bench,
His cane resting at his side,
His doleful eyes glance about the park,
But, restless, do not dwell for long.

Then he hears children playing with a beach ball,
And turns to see them standing in a circle.
The ball darts back and forth between them,
Kept from touching the ground – the challenge.
Their voices excited, laughing, shouting, urgent, gay –
Merriment of youth.

A tall girl hits the ball with a tight fist.
But it shoots straight up and gets snagged by branches —
The ball now suspended and out of reach.
Squeals of excitement and angst from the children
Proclaim their predicament.

A smile flickers across the old man’s face…
A twinkle in his eye.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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The Brightest Star in the Night Sky

Before and after thee, an infinity.
Life but a momentary thing
That dissolves in eternity.
Applause and glory, misbegotten,
Your memory long forgotten.

The directing mind alone a divinity.
The body a loathsome encumbrance.
To benefit others the nitty-gritty —
Everything else a wide circumference.

Dedicate your life to others, the mantra.
Dismiss pleasure and pain, a recanter.
Come back to the inner mind, a sanctuary.
Remember the one purpose eleemosynary.

He wrote to himself not to forget,
Keep to the singular purpose dead set.
The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius,
That’s the immortal Marcus Aurelius.

All poetry — Henry Barnard

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You Visit Me Now and Then

You visit me now and then.
A similar smile or glance or gate —
It can be anything, at any time, simply fate;
And there you are, once again.

What bound us together
That held us in its grip?
Where is it now, once so strong, once forever?
Like a memory of a foreign land,
Just a passing dream turned to sand.

I went back to our home,
And there were strangers living there.
They took no notice of my stare.
How could they know?
Why would they care?

They gave me pause,
And made me wonder:
Is theirs to be only a dream
In time’s endless stream?

Only a dream.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Your Mind, Not Your Own

There is no limit to its chatter;
It jumps about like a jack in the box.
In the barely perceptible a constant clatter,
The mind is a wily red fox.

It rambles where it may;
You really don’t have a say.
Round and round and round it goes;
You can’t douse it with a hose.

Count your breaths one, two, three;
It will just shout with glee.
But if you focus on nothing more,
You may show it the door.

Yet, try as you might,
This little devil, a wild horse,
It leaps and creeps and sneaks about,
A primal force.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Rhyming Emily

Just give Emily a rhyming dictionary
To work in her bedroom monastery,
A wondrous gift to someone solitary,
An endless source of fun diversionary.

Happy as a clam this rhyming visionary.
What a golden mine of vocabulary
She would have found this lapidary,
If only someone had been her emissary.

What she would have done salutary.
Verbal needlepoint even more extraordinary.
We would all have been the beneficiary
Had Emily had the damn dictionary!

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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