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

My Story

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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

My Story

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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

My Story

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Joy

Kids dash for the summer pool.
Make a big splash the only rule.
Hootin’ and hollerin’ and swimmin’, stay cool.
Everyone not there – what a fool!

Wiggle and jiggle —
There’s fun in the sun.
Don’t forget to giggle
Until the day is done.

Everyone wearing goggles.
Back stroke, breast stroke, side stroke, crawl.
Peewees in a constant joggle,
Just having a ball.

Submerge, emerge, soak.
Back flip, handstand, float.
Dive in, belly flop, cannonball.
Who’s the biggest goofball?

As the day winds down,
The merriment a mere echo,
But your best bud still a funny clown
Like Marco and Polo.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Assets

Time is the only currency.

Seneca

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

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Vanish

Generations come and go —
The only permanence the flow.

Little waves lap upon the shore;
They thrive a moment and are no more.

Your time on earth a blink —
Even your memory long extinct.

So how to live the issue
When life itself mere tissue?

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

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Fair Play

‘Tis fair play, I say —
So don’t worry yourself none.
Death don’t descriminate, I tell ya;
All’s welcome.
Never ya mind then,
For Father Time, he sees to it —
Keeps for all and sundry
A certain ‘pointment.
Nope, no reservations needed;
He’ll call ya when it’s time.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Free As A Bird

Where were you before birth?
And after death?
In the same non-existence?
You pass from one into another non-existence.
No choice, pre-planned.

One loses only the present moment in death.
One gains only the present moment in birth.
You are a captive of it,
For there is nothing else –
There is no future
And no past…
Illusions.

Let your mind roam free today.
Let it leap with associations.
Let it inspire with originality.
Let it frolic in the lush pastures of pure thought.
Let it rejoice, complete and entire unto itself.

For we are silly little things,
Trapped by a narrow existence,
Snared by time and space.
Yes, “a little soul carrying a corpse.”
Indeed, Epictetus.
But your mind, that is free —
Free as a bird.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Little White Butterfly

Psst, between you and me,
I pretend the little white butterfly,
It’s really you!

Flutters about me in a protective way,
With the lightest of touch.

I know what it’s trying to say:
I love you still – forever — very much.

I know you cannot hear me true,
But I do too – you — oh so much.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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The First Eye

Light from the sun created the first eye.
Millions, perhaps billions, of years ago,
A creature evolved a light sensitive set of cells,
And so emerged from sightlessness.

This creature had an advantage over its blind competitors,
Which led to the breeding of offspring with the same mutation.
So it was the lit world became visible.
Let there be light also meant seeing the light,
Not just groping in the dark.

So, now, millions, perhaps billions, of years later,
Many creatures are endowed with highly evolved eyes —
Eyes that, furthermore, can see deep into the universe with telescopes
Or deep into the once invisible, microscopic world with microscopes.

Our vision has become transcendent over time,
One of the great achievements of the species on Earth,
Having evolved from a brutish, dark world
Where there was light, but no sight.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

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