ED AHERN - POEMS

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He's had over a hundred thirty poems and stories published so far, and two books.

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                                     Things
 
Our clothes tatter, our shoes smell,
our wood decays, our paper brittles,
our marble chips, our silver tarnishes,
our drives corrupt, our food rots,
our steel rusts, our wine sours.
Flawed and failed
 
 
Some things are nice, some necessary
Some liked, some lusted after
Some longer lived, some longer liked.
Some adored, some abused,
Some displayed, some defaced.
Donated and discarded
 
 
Yet some things of no value
are close, are comfort,
are talismans, are touchstones,
are emblems, are ensigns,
are memorials, are monuments.
Kindred and kept.
 
These we will not part with,
these we have no buyers for,
these we touch with reverence,
these we hide from other eyes,
these we see ourselves in,
honored and haunted.
 
A bronze medallion faces me,
a fat man perched on sacks.
a god of prosperity,
a promise of well being,
a wish in my decline.
Tarnished and treasured
 
 
The scuffed wallet rests in my drawer,
the lone dollar enfolded.
His estate,
the day he killed himself.
The leather urn holds friendship,
lost but lingering.
 
 
 
                                     Marking Time
 
Two legged beings,
floating until birth,
bed-bound for sleep,
legless for eating and work,
prone again for sex,
littered for sickness,
kneeling for defeat,
death-bedded for departure.
And in between
standing around
marking time.
 
 
 
                                     The Predators
 
 
My fears crouch in hiding
just beyond my senses.
Creeping through the thicket
in slow and certain stalks.
No use to run and hide,
or propose another victim.
The prey has been selected
and they'll charge as I falter.
 
To deny them is a folly,
to embrace them is a sin.
So I wait for them to pounce,
And know my listless grazing
just incites the beasts.
 
 
 
                                                Vigils
 
Faces blur, dates are forgotten,
and stories grow fabulous,
but names abide, and feelings
 
Emotions hold true
about those who were,
about their absence.
 
Memories flicker
and decorate our beings
like votive lights.
 
 
 
                                      By Default
 
A life is not things chosen,
it is the things declined.
The paths not trod,
the partners not pursued,
the help not given,
the toil not done.
A life is burnt in by omissions
whose only traces are ash.