Category: Poetry

Life is that time you played

What started out as hide-and-seek

Then someone added Nerf guns

Secret bases, boys-vee-girls

And finally a rope swing and a dare

Water so cold it warmed the after-swimming air.

Treats meant to last the week eaten then and there.

Nothing ever tasted so sweet.

No one saw the June sun duck below the trees

behind the river line.

Well past supper time!

On legs sore from running you nonetheless peeled

Across the fields

To a half-meant ‘sorry momma’, and a half-cold spaghetti meal.

 

Life is the buzzing sound

From music played too loud

And the noise of the college crowd.

That lingers still in ears and on your clothes

All down September’s rain-painted side-walk home,

Reminds you of that second pint,

The little smile she bore you

Sideways, mid sentence to her friends,

That might – just might – some future night, blossom into much, much more.

 

Life is those endless minutes waiting, anticipating

The breaking of the swept and polished order of long-kept

Knick-knacks, unmoved since last They stormed the door;

That in two violent minutes of shedding little coats and mittens triggered

More noise than needles make in all the winter weeks of knitting new ones, one size bigger.

Then They finally appear, you find

Little faces so filled with Now and so in likeness of Their parent-child, standing, smiling just behind,

It calls to mind, every school lunch prepared, every memory shared

and all those times bygone.

This rich reward, this weekend chaos, is the reason why you struggle on.

 

Life is never ‘staying safe’,

Waiting, clutching to existence,

Until every living risk fades to nothing.

 

 

 

I came across this poem that I’d written ten years ago to mark the passing of Gary Gygax – creator of Dungeons & Dragons

Eulogy For A Dungeon Master

Countless the basements
You transformed to caverns;
Nameless the kitchen tables
fabled, formed as tabled taverns
Where a pimply 16 year old
Did his best
to bluff the role
Of rugged half-elf grimly
Assigning the next quest or tale
From o’er the rim
Of a dinted pint of frothy ginger ale.

We saw not the chinks
In our own teen-male armour
Nor did we stop to think
If days of playing roles might harm our
Hold on a real world so much more alarming
Than a hoard of charging orcs.

For in that four foot table space
Of paper, dice and figures made of lead
There thrived a truly magic place
where teenies meek were brave instead.

No slick slew of game designers needed we
No 3-D graphics, LANs or fancy Wiis.
With one hardbound spellbook you made the spark
That filled our teenage years with something more
than boredom and a high school pecking order.

Maybe your DM’s rolled a 20 now
Or just grew up and found
a girl, a job, a better place in whatever
World is real to Him.
And in a box in some cosmic attic
Your long forgotten character sheet
Will fade to dust, crumpled up against
An old SAT study guide.

But know this, Gary Gygax:
In every memory that still persists
In every fighter, cleric, thief or mage
Reborn upon a line-ruled page
A piece of you comes back to life.
And so we say adieu and thanks
Until we meet again as NPCs.