In My Own Words – Page 107 – The Poems of David Garlick

I held her in my arms.

The sky was winter dull

but in my mind

I now see only brightness.

How small she seemed,

warm against my chest

she was mine;

just for a while.

Proud dad was gruff

and mum, new to me;

fresh off a plane,

twanged Ausy sounds.

She let me hold Athena,

brave soul, for what knew I

of such small beings.

The years have fled,

though still I visit

in my mind;

those happy times;

simple, in our friendship.

It makes no sense

that forty years have gone,

and you are not a baby

anymore to anyone

but me.

David Garlick, Victoria, February 1996

For Athena

I love the early morning time,

just as the sky is turning grey

and birds in song their voices raise,

in greetings to the dawning day.

And having pushed the window wide,

I sneak into a world of green

there, camouflaged against a rock,

I lie in wait, unheard, unseen.

Then all at once they swoop to earth,

to pull worms from the dewy lawn.

I flatten to the sand stone rocks,

twitching tail and sinews drawn.

Closer still they work the grass,

heads cocked to hear a wormy noise.

Quivering I know the time to leap,

a coiled spring, a sense of poise.

It’s not in hunger that I hunt.

My food is waiting on a plate.

It’s just an instinct deep inside

that only hunting things can sate

David Garlick, Victoria, April 1991

Lets celebrate our lives.

The places we have seen,

the happy times with family,

the things that we have done.

Those special memories,

the pet we loved so well,

the cake that rose,

the flower that bloomed,

the stories that we tell.

Lets celebrate our friends,

some here some in our past.

Their kindness shown, the gift of love,

these memories will last.

Remember sunny days

of frost that jeweled a tree.

A puddle splashed with shiny boots,

the humming of a bee.

Lets celebrate the lives –

we’ve done our best to live.

With work and love and joyous times,

the best that we could give.

Such thoughts, the threads of life

that make a tapestry, of happy scenes,

the minds eye sees.

Those poignant memories

David Garlick, Victoria, June 1991.

Written for Hospice Victoria.

Where Christmas is sold, people rush to buy a piece of it.

Merchants smile with money grins and plastic trees glow, unreal.

Only One hundred days left to buy those gifts the TV says –

we dare not do without or children must have, but why?

In desperation we ask them, those so special little people.

What do you want Santa to bring? Advertisers dream, my despair.

Long gone those days of giving, hand made, with love and care,

a horse of corks, a knitted lamb, a cot, lavender bags or bookends. Simple

things, tokens of love; a mirror of those given

long ago, in a rustic stable; there was no room else where.

A mirror of a gift, so precious, that it changed the world.

Yet now this is almost lost to market share and glitz.

Still Christmas lives, where people understand,

where people are real, and mind not how they show it.

Not fettered by worldly things, tied down to earthly matters.

Where they know sharing. Where those with little, give.

And what of Christmas sold? Its still the same, some people want it.

I am happy to have found peace in a place where Christmas lives.

David Garlick, Puerto Vallarta, December. 1996