Tom McFadden

  

Tom McFadden’s writing has appeared in ten countries in such publications as Journal of the American Medical Association, Poetry Ireland Review (Dublin), Voices Israel, Poetry Canada, Storie (Rome), The Plaza (Tokyo), The Poet’s Voice (University of Salzburg-AUSTRIA), Seattle Review, South Carolina Review, Portland Review and Hawaii Pacific Review. A poetry book entitled Twilight of Dreams has been published in the United States by Plain View Press. Tom lives with his wife Loretta in Austin, Texas.

The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

The Far Days

In the long-ago time,
a path used to lead from the back door’s closing
into the world of imagination,
a path slowly worn through that great grass realm
as avenue of our traveled dreams.
Across our path, with each day’s rising,
we watched the shadows shrink
until there lay no dark at all
between the near way and where the grass stood tall.
How the sun seemed to warm our pristine path
and shine on our innocence between the lines’ curving.
Yet, time must flow
and moments lived devolve to echoed essence;
and although we’d have our moments stay,
day must yield to day.
Far from tomorrow we’d on our path play;
now in that tomorrow, I refeel that path’s wishing.
I thank those bright days of so long ago,
but they are gone and I must let go.
Only remembrance are the far days,
and the path turns merely through mist,
for it is gone and cannot be found,
regrown and lost within the ground.

  

Come to Day

From the morning eyes, once more I walk away--
the ones that used to believe in the sunrise
and tried all day to keep the light.
But, time cannot forever hold the day, 
and, at last, must its own spell allay.
I must take this lonely walk
out of someone else’s shadows,
through a fallen sunrise.
I wish that I could borrow light
to lend to that horizon;
yet, a sky cannot use another’s light
for hope to better see its way.
Would that brightness could remain
and eyes still shine, becoming.
Strange, that the sun can still come out,
yet cannot stay.
The face is both here and has gone away,
for twilight’s mist has come to day.