ANOTHER FAVORITE POET: MY DAD

All forlorn and forsaken,
the house on the old frontier.
They days of happy laughter are gone,
And days of silence are here.

Through the eyes of her dusty window pane,
She surveys the country side
For the return of those who have long been gone,
Once more within to abide.

But up and away to the city they've gone
to seek a better home,
And the house behind of oak and pine
They've left there all alone.

Through summer's heat and winter's cold,
She stands there all forsaken.
Within this empty, lifeless shell,
A heart of wood is breaking.

Many years have come and gone,
And no one seems to care.
Her floors and walls are in decay;
Her end is close I fear.

Very soon but a memory,
And a hallowed spot, so dear,
Will grace the ground
where once was found,
The house on the old frontier.

BY: Harold Martin
NOTE: Most people don't know that my dad is quite a poet. His gentle nature and his ability to express with words, I think is quite remarkable. He will probably never be widely read but his poetry means alot to me!!

PIANO by: D.D. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with the winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamor
of childish days is upon me, my manhood/womanhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.