The Poetry of 2023
In 2023 I wrote 6 completed poems.
One of the poems I wrote in my first full year of retirement from a working life remains unfinished, but the six poems I wrote encompass not the usual "New Years" and Birthday Poems, but other musings and concerns, including a treatise on the choice to make some travels on the ground instead of by air, my longtime sobriety and ever growing need to want to do more with my life, another version of my "never satisfied" poetry which seems to envelop my sensibility as I age.
I did write a Thanksgiving poem, "Giving Thanks" which sums up my feelings about having not only lived to my eighth decade, but being able to live it fully and with vigor and love in my heart.
"The Road"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
02/03/2023
4:45 pm pst
When you fly above the road there are departures and destinations
When you drive the road you see the miles pass by
If the end result is simply to get there through your preparations
You'll certainly grasp the where but miss the why
I've looked at country oft through the airplane window
I've seen the spots of civilization scattered o'er the land
Time passes quicker, boring, repetitive, and how
No where to tell geologic difference down below at hand
For certain trips it makes sense to fly the sky above
But if at all possible I like to take my time on the road below
I've flown through life and for this act I can't have enough
So I drive or hike the road, taking my time, taking it slow
I will walk the path, and drive the road, and relish life
Experience, sight, and sound, and God's Great Plan
Nature's hills and valleys mirror those I've dealt in strife
And now relaxation and reward will sit beside me when they can
My journey, yours, our brothers and sisters travels through ages of time
They are different as the geologic marvels on the side of the road
I want to share my aching love of finding places never seen but still sublime
With the words and the pictures of my journey along the road, my world's abode
"The Eighth Arrival "
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
04/30/2023
06:07 p.m. pst
When only two decades and five years old I wrote a long poem
A birthday poem where each stanza represented a year
This open opus held naive youthful assessment of
memories still sharp and solid,
contemplated angsty heartaches and attempted optimistic prescience
As years and then more decades passed
Additional poems were added to the book of my birthdays
Original diatribes of hope and despair
Awakened words of woe and wishful thinking
Birthdays and benchmarks began to assemble into piles of broken promises
and dreary forgotten recollections
Each turn of the annual birthday page,
if not indelibly etched in my poem book,
at least gave pause, as it does for us all,
to recollect again, and hope again, and worry again
At 46 I proclaimed I was bornagain
At 50 I proclaimed it was the first year of a new half century of life
I gave up counting years and began to count decades
Then realized that future decades forward were getting shorter to count
The fifth and sixth passed, and now the seventh closes it's cover
on this chapter.
The Eighth arrives as I note that others sometimes
cannot even count to eight decades
Because life snuffs their candles at the sixth or partway into the seventh
Here I am,
again with the assessments, again with the broken hopes
and purloined promises
Writing another birthday poem,
trying not to count those future decades
and just relax, relishing the present day and hour I breathe free
healthy, cognizant and able, still filled with a common sense
and sensibility for life's twists and pitfalls
I should not dwell on thinking about the departure of the Eighth
I should only celebrate it's beginning, a new beginning, as I always do
I will not worry (I will, but I will make attempts to snuff the state of anxiety)
I will not suffer false and foolish feelings
What's done is done, what's gone is gone
Heaven has it's prepared place, and someday I'll arrive
But not yet.
I'll just let the Eighth arrive,
Here Here, Huzzah
Seven decades done, Seventy years yonder
Don't need to say goodby to the past
Don't need to say hello to the future
Just appreciate the arrival of the Eighth, the arrival of the Now.
"My Personal Independence Day"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
07/03/2023
01:00 p.m. pdt
There are no fireworks, no hip hip hooray
But today I celebrate my eighth personal independence day
In those dark scary times when pain wouldn't go away
Sometimes I felt like fading fast from the fray
Each of us has a breaking point, but I once felt superhuman
Until the Universe taught me that simply wasn't true
I had survived but barely, and felt that all was done
And then the skies opened, and I knew just what to do
The bottle can't uncork itself, the liquor won't slosh and pour
The claustrophobic house of pain won't open it's own door
There's nothing to be frightened of, just end the causal monster
Lock it behind the panel of purpose, mark it off the roster
On July Third, a Friday, after work as usual
With daunting depressive pain encroaching on workweeks' end
A Secret God appeared and I tossed the drugs and booze
Those skies turned brighter, and salvation came around the bend
I didn't need care caution or prayer, it's only common sense
I wasn't going to leave, when I found a sober fulfilling stay
Eight years of optimistic beginnings instead of stalling ends
I celebrate this wonderful personal independence day
"Lahaina (history lost in the fire)"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
08/10/2023
05:30 p.m. pdt
Sudden conflagration consuming an island paradise
Unbelievable calamity
A sense (again) that history, community, and life
Are (again) lost in the fire
With humanity I am shocked, surprised, and stricken with grief
A dark cloud of dread overwhelms me
I walked the streets of Lahaina town and relished history and culture
A history and culture which exists now only in memory and melancholy
Gathering with the populace and other tourists in a tourist town
I breathed the sweet air of paradise and legend
The kingdom of Kamehameha
Now replaced with the miasma of charred destruction
The fires have been raging for ages
The burning has been exacerbated by the bellows of time
Humanity takes time to overcome the shock
Yet community builds again, and again, and again
We, all of us. those who have lived in the places lost in the fires
Those who have visited and remember that the tourist towns
Are the homes to many now displaced or worse eradicated in the burn
Those who read or hear about the destruction in far away places
We are despondent with pain again and again
Lahaina now joins a long list
Fires have ravaged
Rome, London, Munich, Stockholm,
Moscow, New Orleans, Brisbane, Chicago
Boston, San Francisco, Tokyo,
Lisbon, New York, Manila,
Paradise, Grizzly Flats
And other burgs and cities of the world
We mourn(ed) for them all,
And across the blanket of time they
Like phoenixes of yore
Rebuild and restore
It's too soon now, too horrible a thought
As the crackle of the burn still sounds
My heart, my soul, my very existence
Now still
Grieves with the heart, soul and existence of Lahaina Town
"I Want MORE"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
10/22/2023
10:30 a.m. pdt
No matter what I have I seem to need to want more
The life I've led is full and varied, and I've got lots more in store
Is this existence just a game, and do I have a winning score?
I just don't know
E'en as I surge and grow
I only know
I just want more
How many ways have I written that I'm not satisfied
How many times have I welcomed another day and sighed
Am I a nervous wreck, filled with circumspect
Turns and trying, living dying, twining intersect
I just don't know
E'en as I catch or throw
I only know
I just want more
Wise souls have revealed we forget more than we remember
As the years of collective eons drift towards life's December
I've collected things, memories, thoughts and dreams
Satisfaction, interaction, nothing's completed yet it seems
I just don't know
E'en as up or down I go
I only know
I just want more
Did I remember to say I loved you all of you near and far
Did I remember to thank my sun and moon and stars
Did I recollect, divvy up, reflect and dissect
Was this a mistake, or is everything correct?
I just don't know
Heave high, heave ho
I only know
I
just
want
MORE
"Giving Thanks"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
11/23/2023
09:00 a.m. pst
Forget the worry and all dread
Despair and drudgery belongs forgotten in the past
Embrace the fulsome day, and smile instead
There's so much to be thankful for at last
Life passes, with its idiosyncrasies
Life bears its burdens heavy on stolid soul
Enlightened unencumbered by its fallacies
Give thanks for brighter parts embellished in the whole
Look up into the wondrous sky
God's cosmos, aches yet bursts in beauty sublime
Don't question for a moment or ask why
Just sink this soul and heart into the tide of time
Forget the pains and calm your shaking hands
The Universe and humanity can seem unkind
However God and common sense still understands
There's always hope and charity within a willing mind
Life passes, give thanks for this
Experience your blessings, and give thanks for those
Give thanks, give of yourself, give love's exquisite kiss
Giving thanks enriches, the worldly smile just knows