Grateful, every single day…

October eight, nineteen eighty six
A Wednesday, much like any other
Except on this particular day
On his birthday, I thought of my brother.
He was late, he had been for sixteen years
And I’d missed him each single day
At midnight that night, on his birthday
I too almost passed away.

Out of the blue the pain came
My head exploded it seemed
And the sweat poured out like a river
As my brain went to shut-down, I screamed.
There was a surgeon and there was a doctor
Between them they saved my life
The haemorrhage I’d had tried to kill me
But I was saved by them, and my wife.

And my children, so wondrous and loving
They read to me and helped every day
They played cards to help me remember
How to count once again, and to play.

It was a long haul home, but I made it
Past some oddments that bothered me most
Like moving one foot with the other
And a funny strange thing they called toast.

But I’m grateful, and lucky, for I am alive
And I’ve friends who have helped on the way
So whenever the curtains draw back at the dawn
I’m thankful and grateful for every new day.

©Joe Wilson – Grateful, every single day…2015

This was a very personal journey.

That journey into manhood…

Far into the night he wept
She’d dealt a devastating blow
Never had he had a single thought
That she would pack and go.

He couldn’t ever remember a time
A time when he felt so alone
So now in his tears of self-pity
He took another swig and just moaned.

As he looked around his living room
He saw plates and glasses and food
Perhaps at last it had dawned on him
How unsavoury he was, and how crude.

He had finally recognised, far too late
That being crude is a boyhood phase
And that in living with and loving another
It’s time for more grown-up ways.

This is just an example for idiots
Who test the patience of saints
The saints that are called ‘your parents’
Who worry as they let go the restraints.

©Joe Wilson – That journey in manhood…2015

For fun…or is it?

An elephant! Up a tree!

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Once more for animal lovers and children…

What a funny sight it would be
If an elephant really fell out of a tree
The mess it would make around the place
Would be nothing compared to the look on its face.
For elephants do not fall out of trees
They’re places for squirrels and birds and bees
But this was a special elephant you see
And he liked climbing tree after tree.
But he always fell with a mighty thud
Because of course, he was built like a pud!

His feet were large and his fingers well! None!
He used his trunk to really hang on
And of course his ears got in the way
He didn’t belong, well he was just so – grey.
The branches on which he sat would creak
When with his friends he played hide and seek
Who of course always looked up into the trees
Where their very large friend thought he hid if you please
Then he wobbled and shook and everyone could tell
As always the way he came down was, he fell.

©Joe Wilson – An elephant! Up a tree!…2015

No elephants were hurt in the writing of this poem.