The Ghosts Of My Family

There was a moon that night,

That shook my comfortable existence

On this little Earth

And as I looked at the stars

I almost lost my breath

I remembered what the great men had said

That I was made from the heart of dying stars

All of me was not from here, but belonged out there

And as I closed my eyes

I realised that those twinkling lights

Were not just heavenly bodies

But like an ageing photograph

Were the ghosts of my family

Long since gone.

bobby stevenson 2013  

photo: 8track.com

In A Heartbeat

In a heartbeat,

The car turned the corner too fast, and turned over,

The last thing the mother did was scold her

Son for chewing loudly

In a heartbeat

The lonely girl bumped into the guy who was leaving

For good and she wasn’t lonely any more

“It’s funny how we met,” she told her children.

In a heartbeat

He smiled at her and talked about their next trip

And then the darkness covered the side of his face

And he slipped away from her

In a heartbeat

He scratched the lotto card

One hundred thousand it said

And that was the amount of friends he gained

In a heartbeat

He screwed up the cigarette and promised himself

That was that

And it was

In a heartbeat

The sun warmed his face and he smiled

And the blackness let him be for a few kind minutes

In a heartbeat

As she sat alone at the bar, a friend joined her and another

And another and in a heartbeat, she knew she was the lucky one.

bobby stevenson 2013