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Growing Things With Kelly

We have planted things together through the years.
Some planted with our laughter, some our tears.
Of all the things our garden ever grew,
Were the Children that God gave me and you.

When all were seedlings, how were we to know
How beautiful these things would one day grow?
How precious, as we now enjoy their shade,
The difference having children really made.

Have courage then for Christ is yet our strength.
He takes us to the path’s most utter length,
Where we meet again, with all that we have sown,
What matters most? The children we have grown.

-Doug Garrett

Loss

For Donna (June 16, 2000)

When bitter loss seems hard to bear,
think long before you pay such fare.
*”The wings of time though black and white”,
leave other colours in their flight .
Oft, before our heart grows cold,
our loss is filled a thousand fold.
From what may seem a finished lot,
such ashes prove that it is not!
And from them rise the greater means
to realize unfilled dreams.

-Doug Garrett

* Quote from  Ralph Waldo Emerson

My Child

For Rowan (1978)

Above my child’s bed I stand and stare.
How peaceful, how angelic lying there.

Yet was it not this very night,
Not waiting nor listening to his plight 
I swept his reaching arms aside,
All reason gone, my patience tried?

His hands now tucked between his knees and clasped,
What part of my feelings had he grasped?

How soon the boy will be a man,
Yet so much first he needs to understand.
A searching spirit reaching outward from inside
Pleads with me silently to subside.

I’ll try again despite his clamber and rude calls,
All those things that build such solid walls,
To hear with love and cease this fruitless fight,
Remembering the tenderness I feel tonight.

-Doug Garrett

The Weathered Stump

The old weathered stump in the clear meadow stood in a state of advanced decay.
The grass waved their head as they laughed at this dead, grey relic from some other day.
True, the blow that shattered its once lofty trunk has long been forgotten and gone.
But the gnarled, grey wood, moss covered, still stood – defiant, majestic and strong.

The roots to the south, away from the winds, where few take the time to stray,
One day caught a breeze which, slowed by the squeeze, dropped a seed from a pine far away.
Encircled around by the grey and the brown of the trunk, the seed came to rest.
In a hollow all warm, away from the storm, and the wind, and the snow cross the crest.

The soil, all rich from the rotting grey hulk, was eager its bounty to share.
Soon up in the root came a tender young shoot from the seed that was nestling there.
Then came the day when the clouds blew away, that a sapling stood solid with spunk.
While there all around the grass on the ground lay the last remains of the trunk.

The old stump gave that the pine live, but the seed brought the life that it bore.
Yet who at the last, a judgment could cast, as to which to the pine meant the more?

The Tree

Tall tree, long tree. Dark, stark and strong tree.

Blowing green, showing sheen, growing in my lawn tree.

Frilly head, hilly bed. Orange heaped with leaves spread.

Chosen wisp, frozen crisp. Sleep until the spring tree.

Time: Thou Thief!

Time, thou thief of all our schemes, sneaking in to steal our dreams.
Leaving us old men ‘er our thoughts would load us down with scheming plots.
Come my brother, lets join hands and through these clumsy, feeble bands,
Face the future brave and bold, ‘less our memories bring the cold.

Love and faith will lift our feet, marching to life’s rhythms sweet. 
We shall meet the Saviour soon: Promised bride to promised groom.
Standing on the other side, families wait with swelling pride.
Carry high your laurels won – worthy to be Father’s son.

The Untamed, Unnamed in the Night

From a hill near our farm, on a cool autumn day, I watched the wild geese winging by,
I heard the bronzed leaves from the cotton wood trees, catch a breeze, which hissed a good-by.
I closed my eyes tight as I felt my cheeks bright, from the rays of the red, setting ball.
The beauty so rare, left me awed and aware of God’s Country, The North, in the fall.

A marsh just below, shimmered bright in the glow of a sky that reflected its charm.
Then rested my mind on a sudden strange find, that startled my thoughts with alarm.
There were prints all around, in the mucky wet ground, of the paws of the thirsty, untamed,
Who pranced with delight in the dead of the night, then vanished, unknown and unnamed?

The wind on the hill, felt suddenly chill as I sensed them speaking quite clear:
“By whose leave did you claim the right to remain, when you hold no privileges here?”
There’s many disputes, but these were mere brutes, with no rights to which mortals love best.
Still the hot truth remained, It was I who’d be shamed, taking spoils from those dispossessed. 

Their howls have oft times swept over my farm, long after the darkness would fall.
I wondered what love in the vastness above, understood or could answer their call?
The sun now had set and I felt no regret as I willingly relinquished the right,
To those left on the hill, whose rights are theirs still, unnamed, untamed in the night. 

-Doug Garrett

Waiting For Mail on Your Mission

(There is nothing worse, when you are far away, than hearing no news from home. That lonely feeling inspired this poem.)

Write a letter, big or small. Just one letter. One. That’s all. 
If you fear to write at all, then just phone and make a call.
We’ve been waiting since last fall, I really don’t know why the stall.
Even if it’s Alberta drawl, scratch a scratch, scrawl a scrawl.

Raise a ruckus, scream a squall, write graffiti on my wall.
Entertain or plain enthrall. Throw a punch, start a brawl.
There must be something you recall. Something big, something small.
Mailmen now refuse to crawl through the webs that drape the hall.
My mail box I must re-install, If I’m to get my mail at all.

Or better yet, here’s what to do. 
Send future mail to Kathmandu,
Now, now, friends, don’t pout or bawl.
It can’t be worse in quaint Nepal! 

  • Doug Garrett

Trails of Trials

Because we pass this way but once,
However long the years or months,
Better a trail of trials well met,
Victories and friends remembered yet,
And wisdom gathered from gullies steep,
Than all those trinkets some folks keep.

Those I would gamble in a single throw,
What consequence their loss. I’d rather know
That at trails end, is where I find-
Some load made lighter, 
Some wrong made righter,
Some life made brighter-
For having touched with mine.

-Doug Garrett

P Day: Far Away in New Zealand.

(When you serve a mission, one day each week is set aside as a “Preparation Day”: aka “P Day”. It is intended to be used to run errands, do laundry, buy groceries, and that kind of thing. While serving in New Zealand, my wife and I often felt like we were on our own. Who would ever check up on us and see how we were using our time? This poem takes a lighthearted look at our isolated situation.)

Everyday’s a P Day since we’ve been on our own,
We spend it on the beach or we spend it on the phone.
We send a fax or just relax and make ourselves to home.
‘Cause every day’s a P Day since we’ve been on our own.

Up and down the countryside, it never seems to stop.
We travel to the best towns and then its shop to shop.
Just like ruddy tourists, we have to pay the shot,
But every day’s a P Day and we don’t care a sot.

There’s little to do for us folk, but stand around and teach,
Unless the Bishop calls us up to fetch us round to preach.
We might get asked quite candid like. ‘Ere now, what’s to do?
So we tell them it our P Day, so there’s not to misconstrue.

Someday we’ll meet St. Peter, when time comes to cash our chit.
I do hope he closes both his eyes and lightens up a bit.
More sure he’ll say, “Wait up a bit, I recognize you lot.
You’ve used up all your P. Days mate. You’re off to where its hot.”

-Doug Garrett