Relationships are like candles
All shapes and sizes
Some are small
Some are tall
Sometimes they burn bright
Sometimes they burn hot
Sometimes their light grows softer
Sometimes the light dances
Sometimes the light dims
And sometimes the light just fades

Relationships are like candles
Sometimes they burn bright
Sometimes they burn noisily
Sometimes they burn hot

Relationships are light candles
Sometimes they are large
Sometimes they are small
Sometimes they are delicate
Needing special care
Every time they are beautiful

On High

This song, my love—
may it pierce your heart like silver-moon earrings,
the pair I clasped beneath your hair.
Close your eyes now,
and let me lift you—
let me hold you on high,
let me hold you on high.

Out where Kansas wheat outshines the stars,
we’ll tread those golden oceans;
and even if forgiveness falters,
my heart will still rise, wide and free, to love you.

Over and over—over and over—
red Georgia peaches, warm on the tongue,
Florida beaches, wave upon wave:
I’ll write you a new refrain
to carry us home, to sweep us clean,
while diamonds at dusk
wait patient on the shore.

So let Chicago’s sunrise blaze you back to life—
let dawn’s red hymn baptize your dreaming eyes.
Then breathe me in, cling tight,
like a California midnight that swears
the night is ours alone.
As sure as the ring on your finger,
let this moment be—
a hush held only by you and me.

And if your heart grows hard,
let us return to one—
let me rest again where the silver crescents shine.
Let me hold you on high,
let me hold you on high.

Each human life is but a raindrop in hurricanes or a stream of sunshine days. Every infant ever born, each breath ever taken, every toddler's many steps, each word ever uttered, every fact ever learned, each friendship ever forged, every delight and sorrow that made us happy or sad, every love that did endear us, each death that we shall mourn--all are integral parts of the whole of countless lives. These moments and millennia are the catalogue raisonne of humanity. There will never be enough books ever written, enough museums ever to capture, enough memories ever shared to achieve a full accounting of what our ancestors experienced or our descendants will discover. Each life, therefore, is a microcosm of all that has been, is, and will be. So remember, live, and envision as best you can, and be thankful you were one of many to feel raindrops and sunshine streams.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

There was once a child
born beneath the sign
of unburial.

She carried too much—
not in arms
but in tethered memory.
Things with no names,
only weights.

A cracked watch
that ticked in reverse.
A button from a coat
that no one had worn
in three generations.

A feather
from a bird
dreamt once
by her grandmother,
never seen again.

She believed—
as those marked by absence do—
that keeping meant remembering,
and remembering meant
nothing would vanish.

Others crossed her path,
offered to help unfasten the straps.
She refused.
They did not know
which talismans bled
and which only looked like wounds.

So she walked.
Through salt seasons,
through bone-rattling frost,
through forests with no floor
and skies that never asked her name.

The bag grew heavier.
She grew cleverer.
Silent.

And then—
on a day that wasn’t special,
under a sun that wasn’t kind—
she set it down.
Not as surrender.
As an experiment.

The earth did not crack.
The ghosts did not scatter.
Her shadow did not abandon her.

She sifted the contents.
Some were dust.
Some were still singing.
Some curled away like dried petals
and begged to be left behind.

She took a key.
She took the bell.
She left the rest
for the moss.

She walked on.

Not lighter, exactly—
but less governed
by the shape
of her grief.

And with you gone,
I was afraid I’d forget you.

But I was wrong.

I see you in everything—
in every wave that comes ashore to greet me,
in every song the birds sing
outside my window.

Even at night,
I find you between the stars.

And I wish I could leave the earth
just to visit you.

But I can’t—
so I lie on the cold stones,
look up at the sky,
and envy the stars.

Oh, how lucky they are
to be in your presence.

unpaved roads
where will we go
tumbling between brick and brick
latching on to a shoulder sack
filled to the brim with burden
in it we found places for memory
places for love and hope
places for fear and pain
and a big gaping hole
for the ever growing grief
that never seems to fall out
so we head to the lake
and to the sea
because the rocks we hold
are too big to try skipping
across puddles