Sunday, August 27, 2006

A River Reverie by Helen Talmadge

Today, I present to you once again a poem of a lady I introduced you to not so long ago, my aunt, Helen Talmadge, who now lives in a nursing home in Ocala, FL.

If there is one thing I could have wished it would have been to have been acquainted with her work in my youth and not have had to wait until I was well into the late afternoon of my life.

The picture is of Roskilde Fjord and was taken with one of these new-fangled cell phones by this guy I work with. Although not a river, it captures something of the mood of this gentle poem.


I stood beside the river as
the sun was going down,
And as I watched, the lights winked on
all about the town.
The ducks brought their ducklings to
nests along the shore,
Amid sporadic quackings settled
down to sleep once more.

An oar splashed in the water
as a boat drifted by --
The first star of evening
was shining in the sky,
And for a single moment my heart
was filled with simple peace,
For there is a benediction in
moments such as these.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aunt Helen has and still does, touch the lives of many today and days yet to come. One poem written for our cousin whose life was cut short, can be shared by many Mothers and Fathers, whose sons and daughters are are the cannon fodder, of this admisistration.

In Memorium

The world was perfect
in those years
before you had come to be;

the sun shone,
the flowers bloomed,
the birds sang merrily.

Though now your gone,
the sun still shines
and winter follows fall,

but there's a lack
that's never filled;
that cannot be filled at all.

Nuke Watcher / Balt.MD

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this, Cliff.

We need some calm, contemplative moments these days, eh?

Chuck Cliff said...

Thanks, NukeWatcher, I'll be putting that one up later, when I think of a good illustration -- I've got a pix of David and me when we youngsters,I could scan it in.

Chuck Cliff said...

Yeah, James, it's the little things.

We had such a lovely day today, can't say what it was -- it's late summer and the sky was in constant flux between sunshine and storm clouds -- we were out in country...

The colors! Some chicory growing by the roadside -- so blue!