2 Poems by Pat Connor

In the House Where I Grew Up

The kitchen table

In the house where I grew up

Was wooden, cold and stained



Came apart in the middle

Like so many ruined meals

And other realities hard to digest



Silences which say more than words can say

Furtive glances the only I love you

Support incomplete, bond left unspoken



When we left the house where I grew up

The kitchen table stayed behind

But the dining room table came with us



A place to spend and fear the holidays

An anchor to hold us to our past

When we did not know how to be a family


Epic


My feet

            Set squarely in

                                                The present

My eyes

            Firmly focused on

                                                                        The future



The narrow way

            Seems dangerous and hard

Wrought with strife

And lonely



But, when not absorbed in

            Seeming circumstances

Or caught up in

wavering from



Side

                        to                                                                               

                                                side   



It merely becomes

                                    The surest, shortest distance

            Between two points



The past has passed

                                                The present

Is

But a fleeting gift

                                 

I will hold out for

                                                                        The future

And trust in

                        What it brings



Bionote

Pat Connor's first chapbook, Scarborough Songs, was published by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Part-Time Contemplative, his second chapbook with Lyricalmyrical, was released in 2016.  He is a manager for the Toronto chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change.