If angels should pass upon this road
After I’ve long departed.
If you should hear them in the night
In the rustling of the leaves.
If you should speak with one of them,
Its voice, a half-remembered sound.
If they should ask,
What did his days on Earth achieve.
Then raise a glass with the angels
And speak only of the good times.
If after I have gone
You should ever think of me.
© 2020 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally Published 14 September 2015
photo credit: kbetty An angel who doesn’t know he has a halo via photopin (license)
I keep hearing that song.
That song you played
When you were still something.
When you were still alive.
I remember you placing
Your hand in mine, trusting
You had the moments left
To do anything.
You had your whole life.
A million breathes to take,
A whole life and everything.
When you were still alive.
© 2020 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally published 14 December 2016
photo credit: Derek R Goulet Beach Bird via photopin (license)
Yesterday is not tomorrow,
Memories are not today.
All those childhood tears
Yet you are not crying now.
You survived my darling,
You survived.
And those heartfelt sighs,
Too, too many goodbyes.
Teddy bears the only lonely listeners,
And birds with broken wings.
Yet you survived my darling.
You may still fly.
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally Published 31 March 2017
photo credit: Ross Elliott CorfeCastle 0214 0801bw via photopin (license)
Jasmine twists across the tower doorway
Green vine only no flowers left,
No sweet perfume. Just castle ruins
A path forgotten, overgrown.
Garden’s glory ages past
In this abandoned Camelot.
© 2019| Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally Published 10 December 2016
photo credit: farenough Abandoned Morris Island Lighthouse. Built in 1876 and out of use since the 1960’s. [Folly Beach, SC] via photopin (license)
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: “φragments insoumis” Ce qui est mhttp://photopin.com/free-photos/sins,-past,-memory,-#ajuscule semble aussi lointain qu’inconnaissable, ce qui est connaissable semble aussi minuscule que proche . . l’illusion est néanmoins transcendante, la transcendance non moins illusoire. via photopin (license)
The silence is crumbling
Like the Arctic
It is starting to thaw.
Long buried memories
Should be left to rot
In the coffin,
Amongst the detritus of the landfill
And not burst to the surface
As a reminder, a haunting,
A skeleton call.
© 2018 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: garlandcannon Persistence of Chromatic Memory via photopin (license)
Falling into the future,
When the memories will let me.
The memories that did beget me
And like a lover’s arms want to keep hold.
© 2018 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: And Now for Something Completely Different via photopin (license)
The man put down his newspaper.
His eyes were not what they once had been,
They had seen too much
Of war and hate, and change.
So he closed his eyes to shut out the dark
And slept right there in his old armchair for a while.
He dreamed of when he was younger;
He dreamt of all of his firsts,
First kiss, first dance, first nights.
Always the first and never the last,
For in his dreams
He wasn’t chained within a body that creaked.
His world was not bound by those four familiar walls
And the good times would come back and greet him.
Because in his life there had been many good times;
There had been joy, he’d known love, he’d known laughter.
For the lights of his memory might dim
But they’d never go out.
For in dreams
They came back to greet him.
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally Published 22 December 2015
photo credit: Claude-Yolande La robe bleue via photopin (license)
Secrets catch on the breeze,
Whispered by the wind
Like a sacrament of memory.
A tale no one knows how to begin
Or what should remain untold
To maintain this fragmentary truce.
If the wind should change
And withhold the truth
Until another day,
What then?
What becomes of the future
If secrets remain unspoken.
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: Natalia Medd Summer Wind via photopin (license)
Your heady perfume haunts me
That scent of you in the air.
Dizzying sensations that linger
Like the silhouette of a body
Just sketched on the pillow
When nobody is there.
I caught a glimpse of your shadow
A fleeting glimpse, just a hint
That you were there
Before it was gone.
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
