Batting practice

Every day seems to be a rehearsal of sorts

For the next game

Which is ‘Today’s game of life”?

The night before the dishes are done

Coffee is ready to turn on

No items on floor to trip over

If need be alarms are set

A short list of ‘To Do’ lays by the wallet and keys

A reminder of sorts that

To be a living viable member of life

A plan for that existence must exist

A purpose if you will

Whining about not moving to Florida

Or to a patio home

Only begs the question

But what will I do

Reading the paper has really became passé

Facebook only has so many friends

Eventually the coffee pot is drained

Then what?

First pitch whizzes by

Strike one

Still haven’t gone to the grocery

Got it

Next pitch is on the way

Knees are slightly bent

Yes, yes the French lesson has been learned

Ball 1

The memory

Starts to come back

The next ball will probably be a curve

Asking her to dinner

Oh yeah, Ball 2

Sweat in 90 degree sun flows

When will I ever get on base

Good Luck with that

Base running is a whole other game

Strike 2

Concentrate

Keep your head in the game

This crazy game of life

FXC 10/3/2019

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Well it’s a question

Do you speak French?

Early on there were some hardened educators

That were of the opinion

Latin would be my strong suit

Well hopefully they didn’t bet the bank on that

In subsequent years there seemed to be a need

To learn Spanish or German

In no particular order

But both attempts

Resulting in disorder

Then though

A retired educator

Was of the opinion

That two aged

Septuagenarians

Would fare well

Learning a new language

To stimulate their mental aptitude

And whatever else

An online course was chosen of course

Books are too intimate

And she would always

Be looking over my shoulder

In all fairness to me

My compatriot and competitor

Studied French four years in high school

Granted cobwebs lingered

Interesting point

There is now an assigned time

For the study period

Not sure why

But dinner at the same time

Is more difficult to arrange

Than a set time to learn French

Wonder if there will be a tape made

Of the first dinner in which French

Is the primary language

My suspicion it might

Be our most hilarious meal

Well let’s be honest

We’ve got nothing to lose

FXC 9/28/19

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5 AM in the darkness

Of A Gatlinburg morning

Rushing creek provides

Nature’s orchestra

Solitude slips in

As a soft summer breeze

Heralds a cooler day

Jumbled thoughts slowly

Begin to make sense

No phones, TV

Just the creek and me

To solve the problems of the world

But always so difficult

To recreate this moment

When I leave

Gatlinburg

FXC 9/14/19

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This Day

To long to remember all the details

Of that seemingly hastily arranged day

Yes 17 might have been a bit young

For a young lady to be proposed to

And yet no logic would discourage the young man

Girlfriend just did not suffice to describe the desired relationship

New to dating he totally understood competition

Would be fierce

No time to be hesitant and noncommittal

Wine, dine and plead your case

That all that was right in the world

Was in her waiting to be set free

Waiting would just postpone the dream

Now fifty years later to the day

As the mind sometimes struggles with details

The TV is turned off

No endless social media

Alone for a moment

Still does not seem like

There is enough time

For a moment alone

Grandchildren have gone home for the day

Dinner for two again

How perfect

Dinner for two

With you Julie Becker

FXC 9/13/19

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Gotta to love youth

Pure bluster and ignorance

Infinite wisdom and no experience

Until the night sky lights up

With the moment you have been waiting for

But did not expect

The love of your life

New adjectives enters one’s vocabulary

“Clueless” is the primary one

And now the mirror has prominent purpose

“Why didn’t I brush my hair?”

But no amount of logic blocks

Our headlong rush

Into the grooming process of a relationship

Remember, “Jump?” “How high?”

The dance of love is so serious

We want to get it so right

But we are so ill prepared

How do you pass a test on relationship?

Is it the money that is earned?

The year of the car?

Size of the house?

After fifty years

Which is a fair sample

There does not seem to be a benchmark

A grade on the marriage certificate

But at the end of the day

A long day

A simple “pass-fail”

Will suffice

With a well worn smile

FXC 9/7/19

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Good Morning! It’s only fair

We talk early as we often did

Phones always seemed to connect us

Imagining you as we spoke

Even now your smile

Is in front of me

Your voice echoes

Your little boy, so grown

Has come to visit

From many miles away

Such a sweet young man You raised

Thoughtful, giving

Certainly inherited and developed qualities

He grapples with meaning sometimes with out you

But the path you set

Holds him straight

To this day

Sadness could envelope my heart

Yet your young man

Let’s the sun shine

On all the gifts you gave

Sweet lady!

FXC 8/31/19

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Have an in house critic

Who has the opinion

That I’m mumbling to myself

With these ruminations

And yet, yet

The voices talking in my head

Are what I hear back

From you all

This world we share,

So strange, so brutal

So nurturing, so unpredictable

Oftentimes no good choice

For faith, politics, politics, or even family

Seems like having to do the best we can is all we have

With animals it clear, survival of the fittest

With us seems like it’s often just chance

Get so bogged down with endless headlines

Of tilted agendas and egregious behaviors

Always distracted by the sensational

And yet within in us all needing to be nurtured

The slim morning light of dawn

That defines us to be good

I know what is evil

You know too

It’s not a political foe, or an opposing religion

Not a wayward family member

It’s not letting the daylight show what we CAN be

We have an unending quest to make ourselves better

And in doing so we become OUR new world

It is real clear

You and I know it

Traipse down the seemingly endless path of erratic and negative behavior

Or stand for what is right

We are together in this

Now don’t know how all will end

But see no alternative but to hold hands

Working to be more than a haphazard happenstance

FXC 8/24/19

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Sitting across from you

At your kitchen table

Searching your empty eyes

For a hint of your dark sojourn

Into the pits of depression

What, what was wrong with me that I didn’t see the red flags

Now, now just trying to stench the flow of hope spilling from you

Such a difference when reason rules

Now just subject to the ebb and flow of hope and belief

Want to hold you so much for so long

Till you are back laughing with us

Just can’t know that day will happen

Praying, working to hold you up

On my back if need be

Please, please know you are good and loved

FXC 8/22/19

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So my memory has been tracking downward

Since whatever happened happened

Visits to the grocery store must be with blinders on

As inevitably an energetic old friend will notice me

And insist on a ‘how are you conversation’

It would be fine if I really knew who they were

Rather than a snapshot of someone familiar

But not familiar enough to remember

So a possible home remedy to fading memory

Digitized memory

Scan hundreds and hundreds

Okay thousands of old family and friend pictures

Label them

Don’t know if while in the grocery

I could pull out my phone to scan the chatty friend

To determine who they were

Nonetheless

A method does exist to prop me up in social settings

However two miscalculations occur here

The first is labeling all the digitized photos

Maybe if I had one child and they had one spouse and one child

This would be a doable project

But four children with spouses and then grandchildren

Crazy

And do you realize how some of your own children and grandchildren

Look alike at various points of their existence

Right off the top then have to refer to my in house Wikipedia live in friend

To fill in the multiple blanks of digitized photo recognition

Needless to say this would really help

Does it help when a familiar face starts off a conversation with,

“Do you remember when,?”

Maybe there is a digitized audio memory app

But at least I can hit the grocery store again

FXC 8/17/19

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Facebook Friends?

Crazy new way to meet people

On the WWW

Friends of friends

Relatives of relatives

Pictures and stories

Never would have known them

Without Facebook

But seriously a mixed bag

All friends come with baggage

Some religious, some political, some with advice

Periodically strangled

With unwanted beliefs or advice

Just block them

But then discovered

50% of my heretofore friends

Possessed opposite beliefs of mine

Can’t live with that or them

And yet bubbling up

From the inconsistencies of politics, religion and advice

Is the very old adage

“A friend in need is a friend indeed ”

And I really do need you

FXC 8/14/19

Copyright