Roy Exum
A number of people share stories with me on a daily basis that have touched their soul. That way every one of them touches mine. On New Year’s Eve my dear friend Cauley Hayes – forget for a minute the wonderful surgeon saved my life on several occasions down through the years – sent me the perfect story at a perfect time. When I read “And Then It Was Winter,” I can guarantee the sun, the moon, and every star in the constellation were aligned in a way the New Year’s treat had a profound effect on me.
The version Doctor Hayes shared had no byline, no way to track it, so when I searched the Internet for some type of clue, I soon learned it was written by one of America’s foremost poets, Michael Dailey, whose words have touched my heart more than once in the past. There is a website, PoetrySoup.com, where Dailey and the best writers in America congregate, that I adore.
For a long time I have feared the demise of poetry. It is perhaps the most beautiful of all creative writing, this because every story seems to sing, and a huge part of true education is left out when elementary school students fail to memorize and recite. That’s hard to do at first, but with practice comes delight, and a young boy who fails to memorize “If,” the classic from Rudyard Kipling, has been horribly deprived of the direction to true manhood.
Allow me to share two of Michael’s poems. The first is the one Cauley just shared. The second, “A Little Hill At Arlington,” makes me cry grateful tears whenever I read it:
* * *
AND THEN IT WAS WINTER
By Michael Dailey
Time has a way of moving
So quickly that you’re caught unaware
The future seems far in the future
Then all at once it’s right there
It seems like only yesterday
I was among the young
Just married with a young child
Our lives had just begun
Yet now it seems eons ago
The years just came and went
I glimpse of how it used to be
How my hopes and dreams were spent
But here it is – it’s winter
The winter of my life
Somehow it got here way too fast
My memories are rife
I remember seeing old folks
Thinking that was years away
I didn’t have to think of it
That is until today
So here it is – my winter
And I can see the change
I’m older and I’m slower
And the young now seem so strange
I find taking a shower
Is a target for the day
A nap is not a treat I take
It’s my mandatory way
I advance into this season
Unprepared for aches and pains
The loss of strength and memory
A walker and some canes
Regrets? Sure there are things I’ve done
And things I didn’t do
But I’ve lived a happy lifetime
Regrets? There are so few
If you’re not yet in your winter
Please do take some advice
It’ll be here quicker than you think
Time does not suffice
Whatever you’d like to accomplish
In your life time – do it now
Don’t put it off till later
For laters pass somehow
And you haven’t got a promice
That you’ll live to see all seasons
Life sometimes is fleeting
Comes and goes without the reasons
Live for today – say all the things
You want loved ones now to hear
Tell them to live their life in full
For their winter may be near
My spring was fun and full of life
My summer days were thinner
My fall was fat and happy
And then it was my winter
Posted March 2013
* * *
A LITTLE HILL IN ARLINGTON
By Michael Dailey
There’s a little hill in Arlington
Where no bodies are interred
Yet crosses dot the hillside
And Taps are sometimes heard
Unlike the Unknown Soldier
With “unknowns” in the ground
This little hill in Arlington
Is for soldiers never found
I grew up without a father
He was gone when I was four
Flying for the Air Force
Back in the Korean War
His plane was ore’ the Azores
When communications ceased
The search went on for days and days
They never found a piece
My mother raised four children
Each day she learned to cope
She said until a body’s found
We’d never give up hope
The years went by just waiting
And my mother, bless her soul
Held on until her very end
To a grieving widow’s role
For fifty years we children
Had no resting place for Dad
No gravesite and no markerNo closure ever had
Then on little hill in Arlington
Where no bodies are interred
We raised a simple white cross
Dad’s Taps were finally heard
My big sister got the folded flag
And we all shed the tears
That had been bottled up inside us
For all those fifty years
Now Dad, he has a resting place
With other fallen sons
On a quiet little hillside
Right here in Arlington
Posted in 2011
* * *
If you get a chance in the new year, please visit the wonderful website called PoetrySoup.com where Michael Dailey’s best poems can be found, along with hundreds of other masterpieces. But I must warn you – if you get on PoetrySoup.com some night right after supper, it can easily hold you hostage until after 1 a.m. Also know some of its poetry may make you weep with gratitude.
royexum@aol.com