You have heard the awful stories recounted many times.  Someone loses control to road rage and shoots and kills another driver or some variation with the same outcome — one man, incensed, murders another, a total stranger, with no reasonable justification.

And our common reaction to this scenario is stark horror that anyone could be so cruel as to willfully murder a perfect stranger that way.  But I would submit the murderer is also a victim here.  The roads are really a disaster lying in wait for the next impatient driver, and we are all that impatient driver — we are all in a hurry to get where we are going fast, and yet the roads are often filled beyond their capacity, particularly at rush hour.  So they are a trap waiting in the wings for all of us — we are all susceptible to being swept away…

Old age —
The sunken eyes, the knotted brow,
A bony body chained in a cage
Limps about like a withered sow.

You have seen the years fly away,
And friends and lovers no longer attend,
But memories, they abound and stay.
Your reckoning? Not a merry end.

Youth’s beauty has long since gone,
Yet your eyes, they still dance to song!
So a furtive sparkle still appears
In this ancient face despite the years.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

I was only 15 years old but adventurous — what 15-year old isn’t?  We were all sailors.  Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the yacht club would hold races for a fleet of Beetlecats to go round buoys on Waquoit Bay on Cape Cod — a large, 3-by-1 mile bay that lets out through a rocky jetty to Vineyard Sound.  I say “we” because my buddy, Jimmy Johnson, used to crew for me in those races.  We were a team.

That bay, though large, was extremely safe, as there were few locations on the bay that were deep, and all locations were very visible to the surrounding houses, but mostly because it wasn’t the real ocean — which lay just beyond the rocky jetty.  The ocean was where unpredictable and potentially dangerous things happened, but the bay was “safe” or so it seemed.

I got the idea one day…

You see them with their binoculars, walking into the woods and trying to catch a glimpse of their favorite birds, if only a momentary glimpse — birdwatchers.  For sure, there are some really breathtaking birds to see, and we are not even talking parakeets here.  Two of my favorites are the Yellow Warbler and the Northern Cardinal, which I mistakenly call the Red Cardinal and is forever associated with a professional baseball team, the “Cincinnati Reds.”  To see a bird dressed head to toe in all yellow or all red is certainly beautiful but even a little bit startling.  Like nature itself is just showing off — brazenly.

Bird watching, no doubt, is one of those wonderful hobbies that has the power to give you a little vacation from yourself, as you immerse yourself in the forest and in the “hunt.”  It’s hard to think about bills, the taxes you…

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

My Story