Month: August 2022

I Over Think Stuff

I wrote this for a friend of mine who recently celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary.

Forty years is a long time to believe in anything, but if you’re going to believe in anything, it might as well be love. Love, what a strange and unreasonable concept. We promise to love people and things as if they’ll always remain the same. Maybe love has nothing to do with those things. When love grows old and uncomfortably comfortable——- is when it is the most real. After the sex is gone, after the sweet Hallmark Cards have all been sent, signed and delivered with their cursory hearts and X’s and O’s.  After all is said and done, there’s only you and that fool-hearted promise that you’d give your love to someone forever—it’s truly hard to love anything or anyone forever. Commitments and promises belong to fools, dreamers and those who know the gift of a miracle. Love is a miracle. If ya wanna be loved, then ya gotta be lovable—–its the receptacle law of give and take. There are some who never “get it”.

Lately I’ve been having this awful feeling that I’m forgetting something, or missing something. I get this overwhelming feeling of loss. I feel like life is going too fast and I can’t catch up, or worse yet, I’m wasting time going in the wrong direction. So many forks in the road. I’m so damn sentimental, I hate letting go of people and things. The Buddhist believe that all suffering is due to the attachment of people and things—–And then there’s the physicists who say change is the only constant. 

I overthink stuff. 

In Spite Of It All

You can feel life distancing itself from you

Your gait slower now, as this impatient world accelerates by you, through you, past you-without you

Eyesight blurred in failing light, colors yellowed— fading

Sounds of yesterday’s life muffled, is it my solitary voice, or a strangers echo

Foggy memories withering, names and faces drawn dimmer

Time is a fools theory, where does the circle begin, where does it end

Joints creek and pop, conspiring with winter chill——breaking colder—harsher

What are the things we choose to recall, what are the things we wish to forget

How many overs make an end

Old ships battered, listing in high seas

Less and less of her in view

The saddest four words

She once loved me

In spite of it all

Life remains an unexpected gift

Those Were The Days

Sorry I can’t make it to your mothers Celebration of Life event. This will be my final installment to Jeanne’s letter writing project. I hope she enjoyed the previous eight letters I sent to her while she was in the rest home. I hope they comforted her and made her laugh or perhaps cry—- my stories and words were intended to help her relive some of those good ole days we shared on Briar Lane. I can’t be there to tell my story in person, but if there is a place where pictures and such are being displayed, perhaps you can post this letter.

I’m going back, I’m going way back in time. Back to the 70’s. Back to when classic rock wasn’t something you now hear being played in the produce department of Safeway. There is something unsettling about listening to Van Halen “You Really Got Me” on the store sound-system as I watch an elderly woman examine the firmness of a zucchini. 

 No, I’m going back to when rock and roll was still rebellious and social networking was hollering out your car window at girls in their cars—I can still recall those hot summer Yuba City nights and that distinctive scent of rotten peaches lingering in the stale night air. It’s the end of August and another summer is slipping away. The sound of crickets, bullfrogs and a lone barking dog make up the evenings chorus. Thoughts of returning to school leaves me feeling flat and uninspired. This is the stuff that keeps a small agriculture town like Yuba City forever tucked away at the edges of my memories. We all carry pieces of our hometowns within us. Rainy days playing monopoly, making jokes to hide our insecurities, experiencing an awkward first kiss, playing baseball in a weed strewn field, climbing the levee for a swim in the the river——and coming to appreciate the value of being part of our Briar Lane gang——-where we made friendships to last us a life time.

Back then, on our block we played outside until it got dark or someone’s mom hollered “Supper time”. Yeah, “those were the days”. That’s what old farts use to say to me when I was a kid. I thought that was a bunch of nonsense, but now that I’m an old fart, I find myself muttering “Those were the days”. I suppose, ya don’t know somethings, until you’re ready to know them. Sometimes it’s too late——- and there’s nothing worse than being too late. Too late to share a morning walk, too late to share an evening sunset. Too late to share all those seemingly insignificant moments that comprise a lifetime. Too late to say the things you always intended to say. Things like, thanks for always being on my side, thanks for believing in me when no one else did——thanks for loving me—-cause that ain’t always such an easy thing to do——just ask my wife.

So there you lay and here I stand. Although you no longer inhabit your body and it no longer imprisons you——-I will always carry your voice and memory within me. Somethings are immortal. Somethings never die. 

Jeanne——mother, wife, friend, neighbor, teacher, counselor, life learner, strong and courages, gone but never forgotten.  And to you I proudly say—— “I love you”.

Victor S. Uriz II

Briar Lane Poet Laureate