In My Own Words – Page 57 – The Poems of David Garlick

What stroke of pen or smear of paint

can match the greatness of a simple flower?

What knowledge of this world, one day one night?

can match a cloud or wave upon an ocean?

What emotion greater than the sacrifice of love

or more vile than the hates which emanate from men?

With all our knowledge can we build an ant or mend

a heart, broken by the frailty of a promise?

We live our tiny lives in thoughtless moves,

unable to see the folly of our stupidity.

How crass our thoughts how cruel our actions,

responding to the slightest change of mood.

We do not control our destiny, we just exist.

We must rise above ourselves to be more

worthy of the gifts that we were given?

David Garlick, Sidney, May, 2009

With all our knowledge we might build an ant (line 7)

Old as a bottle of vintage wine,

young as the taste on your tongue.

Old as the river that swoops to the sea,

young as the brook in the hills.

Old as the mountains that touch the sky,

young as their dusting of snow.

Old as the gem won from the ground,

young as it’s inner fire.

Old as the bark on an ancient tree,

young as the blossom it bears.

Old as the rock that sits in the bay,

young as the sounds it reflects.

Old as the seas that circle the globe,

young as the rising tide.

Old as the years that furrow a brow,

young as a youthful heart.

Old as the promise made long ago,

young as the love we still feel.

David Garlick, Victoria. July, 1993

Shadow, our dog, cowers as I open the back door to spring?

The rain drifts down and flakes of snow punctuate the cold deluge!

I know it doesn’t rhyme but then I don’t do rhyme as a rule.

Spring in BC is supposed to be a blaze of colour and warm zephyrs

but not this year. This year it is cold and damp and miserable, damn!

Where is the sun and balmy weather? Where, our superior attitude

to the rest of our beloved Canada. Our witticisms stick in our throats.

Oh BC thou most beautiful of places. Yeh right, where indeed.

I can’t see you through the fog. Moss between my eyelashes!

We chose to live here, after the deserts of my youth and I love it.

We do miss the blazing sun but not the sand storms and flies.

Yes British Columbia, you are still the fairest of them all!

David Garlick, Sidney, April, 2009

Once a month, never more and more often less.

He took a shower in his Stanfield’s undress.

It was woolly, long sleeved, had a flap at the back.

Red as a rose, course as a sack.

He showered in song, as well as in water.

His voice was off key, the words too, sort‘a.

He soaped his long johns that he’d stood in, full long,

before pulling them off from where they belonged.

He rinsed them and wrung them; pink down the drain.

Hung them to drip to a drying refrain.

Then washing himself in warm water and suds;

he waited for nature to care for his duds.

Its easy he said. “My method is best;

to be clean in body as well as in vest.”

David Garlick, (Little Dave), Victoria, May 1996

From a logging story by David Mulroney. (Big Dave.)