Sometimes I Hear My Bones

Sometimes I Hear My Bones

Sometimes I hear my bones.
They settle while I dream,
and sing a sweet sigh,
as tired tendons forget tensions
that hold them prisoner all day.

I listen for their chatter,
when I reach for my tea cup,
or climb the stairs to my room;
but the moaning of muscles,
and the rushing of bellows
as my furnace breathes,
drowns them with a river of sound.

Sometimes I hear my bones,
as they clatter and rap,
when Winter's white finger
makes me shiver and shake;
the rattling clack of a bone quake.

I listen to their music in the night,
as bone passes bone,
when I shift my face
buried in my pillow,
to breathe easy and free;
and their syncopated snapping
calls me from my dreams.

Sometimes I hear my bones,
as they shuffle and pop,
complaining about the load
and the long hours...
All they want is to rest.

Mick McKellar
March 2016

As I get older, my bones complain more loudly.

Mick
 

Life, Maybe

Life, Maybe

My life is more than empty hours to fill,
And calls me to become more than I am;
To reach for stars with passion, faith, and skill,
A crusade greater than a tinker's damn.
Yet, walking such a path without a guide,
Seems far beyond the talents I possess.
To journey on with nowhere I can hide,
Go forward on a hunch or on a guess,
Takes courage I'm uncertain that I own,
And asks me to abandon common sense.
To leap into the arms of the unknown,
Means leaving safety here upon the fence.
My heart tells me I need to act bravely,
And then I'll learn to live my life, maybe…

Mick McKellar
March 2016

One can get sore from always sitting on the fence.

Mick

Manifest Serendipity

Manifest Serendipity

I saw them, writ large last night, in a dream:
Huge letters as tall, or taller than me;
They stood on a lawn, near a nimble stream,
They spelled: MANIFEST SERENDIPITY.
Bright, glowing with rays of summer sunlight,
As emeralds, diamonds, rubies would be;
I bathed in the radiance of the sight,
Shining: MANIFEST SERENDIPITY.
Then deep, distant voices began to sing;
The shining letters were singing to me.
Over and over, they chanted one thing:
“You must manifest serendipity!”
I’d pondered what my life’s purpose should be;
The answer was glowing in front of me…

Mick McKellar
March 2016

Life is full of tough questions. Sometimes the answer is a clear as six-foot tall, glowing letters near a stream in a dream…?

Mick

Phantom Footfalls

Phantom Footfalls

My shuffling gait on the floor of my room,
When my slippers scuff the old hardwood planks,
Brings echoing forth a sonic heirloom,
From a time when dark footsteps were mind pranks.
My pillow is near the attic stairway;
A steep, almost ladder with vocal treads.
They whisper of footfalls both night and day,
As the ancient construction shrinks and spreads.
I can hear our house breathe on long, cold nights,
As warmth dissipates through papery walls;
And winter winds whistle through tiny sites,
To sing with the draughts in stairwells and halls.
Their songs awaken stark, unreasoned fears,
When phantom footfalls touch shivery ears.

Mick McKellar
March 2016

Old houses tell tales and sing of silent spirits. Wind songs whisper along empty halls and footfalls haunt long, chilly nights.

Mick

The Peeking Owl

The Peeking Owl

Twas a Great Gray Owl in a darkling wood,
Staring at me from behind a pine tree,
Asked me “Who?” I was, as a gray owl should.
I responded quickly, “Why, I’m just me!”
He blinked just once, as if considering
What he should day, then he simply asked, “Who?”
So, I stood still a moment, pondering:
What more I could say, what more should I do?
I said, “I’m a writer,” and spoke my name.
He nodded just once, and then he asked, “Who?”
By now I was growing tired of this game,
And said, “I’ve nothing more to say to you,
Except: nevermore to a bird of prey!”
He made a rude noise and he flew away.

Mick McKellar
March 2016

Conversations with owls tend to be one-sided affairs; more like an interrogation than a conversation.

Mick

Breakout

Breakout

I slipped my fetters and I ran away;
I did not look back at my lifelong jail.
The guards I feared, the source of my dismay:
Not there to respond, my flight to assail.
My prison walls, made of anger and fear,
Crumbled silently, fell away to dust;
And the bars that held me, year after year,
Lay beneath my feet -- gone to powdered rust.
The haunted, long years, in that monstrous cage
I built from the fear of what others think,
Fueled sorrow, sadness, resentment, and rage;
And unleashed a flood of digital ink.
My greatest joy, now my Muse is set free:
Though I share what I write, I write for me!

Mick McKellar
March 2016

This piece sprang fully formed from something a friend posted. It was a Facebook meme that said: "The greatest prison people live in, is the fear of what other people think." Apparently, it's a quote from David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who makes a living trying to change what other people think… Hmm…

Mick

Song Unfinished

Song Unfinished

I'm a song unfinished, a tale untold,
A river of consequences at flood.
I'm a portrait in clay, too soft to hold
In your hands, just dust and water made mud.
I'm tied to the Earth by biology,
With distant cousins across all the globe;
And yet no one else is the same as me,
From my worn-out heels to my frontal lobe.
In seven short years I'll have disappeared,
My old cells returned to dust on the Earth;
Yet I always grow the same scruffy beard,
And my memories dwell in the same berth.
I'm always brand new, yet I'm always me:
A beginning and a totality.

Mick McKellar
February 2016

Stuck in a hospital bed, a person has time to think the strangest things…

Mick