"At the Fallen Gate"
and Other Poems
by Daniel Hargrove
Copyright 2014 Daniel Hargrove
Cover art copyright 2014 Daniel Hargrove
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Table of Contents
1) At the Fallen Gate
2) Garden Game
3) Laces and Dust
4) On the Block
5) Were I So Tender Hearted
6) If Ever Under Lock and Key
7) In Counting Scars
8) In a Fall of Roses
9) Where Once a Treasure Lay
10) A Perspective on Myself
11) A Garden, Graced
12) Insinuation
13) Slowly
14) The Lost Pursuit
15) For the Fine Hours
16) Within Our Smiles
17) Without a Fight
18) Press
19) The Journey of Words
20) Compulsion
21) A Balanced Unit
22) In Seeking a Home
23) After We Gathered the Wood
24) A Day in the Park
25) A Prick in the Wool
At the Fallen Gate
My fortunes have struck a hollow note.
Where I was once a man of sweets,
I am a man of bitter herbs,
and words now escape me.
At six we fall and sit and cry...
at sixteen we laugh at the fallen...
at 36 I find it is too easy to fall...
at 60, if we fall, we may never rise again...
The worst part of life, I think,
is the pettiness, the small-minded and crass
things that we have heard
a hundred times before.
If you are like me
you carry scars on your heart
that whisper to your foolishness
when you trust (when you shouldn't).
My brow forever shadowed
at what I learned, all too young...
at the ill that lurks in man
and finds his brightest hour.
The very best part of life, some say
is the love, and make no mistake,
it is love that walked the long mile...
it is love that makes us whole...
...but love has torn a young lover's heart
many times over, and once again...
and once again, as it has before
love has tricked a trusting soul.
Garden Game
Oh, how we wish that wheel would turn,
and, oh, how we wish that sun would rise...
if only that blossom would unfold it's beauty;
if only that ice would melt in the spring...
Under a splash of stars untold
these old scars keep a prayer
caught in my breath,
and ringing in the sky...
I love you, dear garden...
at the end of a rainbow,
in the mind of a child...
love you, and need you, and care for you...
...but I have ridden that wheel
in search of you so long...
...I have watered that flower
in the hopes of sun....
That sculpture of ice that stands in your pool
in the winter, in the snow, that speaks to my heart
will cry in the rain, when the clouds release
the chill in our bones from its dark shackles...
Laces and Dust
Hidden in her coat
was a picture of a church
with the dogwood in full bloom,
and memories of swearing men
every other night
crowded her thoughts...
nights loomed large,
and loneliness settled on her
like a shroud of fog,
and her shoelaces
were always knotted in a bunch...
her eyes were like sharp knives,
and cut every person
who looked straight at them...
she wore rings on seven fingers,
mostly gifts from
three ex-husbands,
and she still had a book
she had when she was five
that she fought her brother for...
women always avoided her
and men in their sixties
always seemed to catch her
in a fishnet of eyes...
most of what she wore
was knitted from yarn
which she bought at the crafts store,
and she kept two knitting needles
in a small bone-colored purse,
and they stuck out one end...
she had a fourteen year-old cat
with one yellow eye and one pink,
a yellow tabby with rough fur
that always fell out into the carpet...
a bowl of hard Christmas candy
sat on her table
that had not been touched
in almost ten years,
and the pieces were glued together,
a solid mass of hard sugar...
dust gathered everywhere
around her small apartment,
on costume jewelry trinkets
that laid out, scattered
on oak bureaus and dressing tables,
and she counted the days,
and she counted the weeks,
and she counted the years
on a calendar with paintings of small town life
that hung in her bathroom
until she finally passed away...
On the Block
...and after a time
you found you could lie
to that special friend...
and of course, they could lie to you.
If they had a pang in their heart
you could ignore it
and they wouldn't mind too very much...
and you would not mind if they had such a pang...
You would both agree
about Billy Joe,
and Billy Joe would be red in the face,
and burn alone in a room in tears.
If one day you gave a cold shoulder
to your special friend
they would be unhurt, it wouldn't matter...
they would still be there if you were alone.
One day you grew up a little too much
and your special friend
was not a friend at all, anymore...
cross my heart and hope to die.
Were I So Tender-Hearted
And, yes, I was so tender. . .
so tender that I cried
at just the thought of it. . .
at just the thought of crying.
Hard words can hurt.
Can hurt, can even wound.
Know me, know I am hurt
by those hard words.
You wield that knife
so carelessly, so easy.
Now I hold that knife,
and I am an angry man.
Once I was Robin Hood,
and once I was an arrow. . .
straight at King John's rotten heart
did I whistle my tune.
If Ever Under Lock and Key
I had known the old man, a bum, for many a year...
I won't share the story he told to me, with you,
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Some nights on the curb, drinking beer, and feeling blue...
about what his wife had whispered when death was near.
Most nights the old man was drunk, but full of cheer,
but not this night, so the dread within me grew
he would tell that long old story I thought I knew...
but something was different, in his eyes there was trust, if a tear.
Without a word, he gently pulled off his shoe
and showed me the ring that his wife had held so dear...
the diamond he gave her before she would say "I do."
It was at that moment that I knew his deepest fear...
that some bum would steal the ring for money for brew,
but he would not lock it away, he needed it near.
In Counting Scars